New gambling
legislation which comes into force in September allows betting
companies to share data with sporting organisations so that match
rigging can be identified and stopped.
Such sharing, though, could breach the Data Protection Act and
the Commission is consulting on how sharing should be tackled. Its
final proposals will form part of the licences which betting
operators will need in order to do business.
The Commission has proposed that people who bet large sums have
their betting tracked and any suspicious activity reported to the
relevant sporting authorities. Its proposals involve a requirement
that gambling companies report such suspicions.
It is likely that internet and telephone bets will have a
significant amount of identifying and tracking information attached
to them because of the systems used. The same is not necessarily
true of on-site betting, where transactions are mostly cash
based.
The Commission has proposed that over a certain limit, bookies
do track those transactions as well. "Our proposal is that we
should introduce a licence condition that would require licensees
to take a risk-based approach with all reasonable steps to identify
customers who place bets over a significant threshold limit, either
in one bet or over a number of transactions in one day," said the
Commission's consultation document.
There are some voluntary agreements in place between
bookmakers and sporting bodies, but the Commission said that it was
worried that such agreements were not as effective as a compulsory
system would be, and considered whether to force gambling companies
to make it a condition of betting that punters agree to data
sharing with sports bodies.
"The Commission acknowledged that any requirement that betting
customers must agree to details about their betting being shared
with the Commission and the sport governing bodies must comply with
the Data Protection Act (DPA)," said the Commission's consultation
document. "The Commission also noted that there is considerable
non-personal information that can be shared between the licensee
and the sport governing bodies."
But while the DPA might cover particular cases, it may not cover
a blanket demand for data sharing, the Commission said. "When it
comes to dealing with specific instances or allegations of criminal
activity, betting operators would normally be in a position to
provide the Commission with information which included individual
customers’ personal data, without risking breaching data protection
principles," said the Commission.
"The position is less clear cut in relation to any condition
compelling betting licensees to make it a condition of business
that a customer must agree to personal information being made
available to the sport governing bodies," it said.
The DPA would limit the amount and kind of information that can
be shared between a bookie and a sporting body, but the Commission
believes that by changing its licences it can facilitate greater
sharing.
"The Commission considers this limit can largely be overcome
through a licence condition which includes the sport governing
bodies as persons to whom licensees are required to provide
information," it said. "We therefore propose to amend condition 15
[of the licence] to include sport governing bodies as persons to
whom licensees might be required to provide information."
The Commission stopped short of demanding that gambling
operators make customers agree to data sharing as a precondition to
betting, but it did say that bookmakers might find life easier if
they did enforce that precondition.
"The Commission does not consider it appropriate to require that
betting licensees make it a condition of business that a customer
agrees to personal information being made available to the sport
governing bodies," it said. "[But] Customer consent would offer
comfort to licensees complying with the proposed amended licence
condition in the event that disclosure happened when other
exemptions did not apply."
"We therefore suggest that, whilst we will not require, through
a licence condition, that betting licensees make it a condition of
business that a customer must agree to personal information being
made available to the sport governing bodies, there may be
advantages for licensees in including such terms as a condition of
their business," said the Commission.
