Betfair: licences, history and record

Betfair began in 2000 as a betting exchange, where customers bet against each other for a commission, and merged into the Paddy Power group in 2016. The Gambling Commission lists six Betfair-linked licensees and recorded a £2 million settlement in December 2025. Two court cases over its duty to customers have followed, and Betfair's own site would not open from our location.

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Pros and cons

At a glance

Founded

June 2000, by Andrew Black and Edward Wray (Wikipedia, secondary)Source: Wikipedia

Model

Exchange: customers bet against each other and the group takes a commission on winnings, net of discounts that vary with activitySource: Flutter Entertainment plc

Owner

Flutter Entertainment; the merger with Paddy Power completed on 2 February 2016Sources: Wikipedia; Flutter Entertainment plc

Operating company

Betfair Limited, number 05140986, incorporated 28 May 2004Source: Companies House

Exchange licensee in Great Britain

TSE Malta LP, account 39561, betting intermediary licence, Gibraltar addressSource: Gambling Commission

Other licensees trading as betfair

PPB Counterparty Services (39439), PPB Entertainment (39426), PPB Games (39411), Betfair Casino (39435)Sources: Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission

Not on the list

Gibraltar licence-holder list, iGaming Ontario directory and South Africa's verified-operator list name no Betfair entitySources: Gibraltar Gambling Division; iGaming Ontario; National Gambling Board

Regulator action found

Commission: £2,000,000 shared by four licensees, decision of 17 December 2025Source: Gambling Commission

Last read

3 October 2026Source: Gambling Commission

Company history

According to Wikipedia, Andrew Black and Edward Wray founded Betfair in June 2000. It built its name on the exchange, where members offer and take bets from one another and the company charges commission on winning bets, not a margin on odds. It sold a 23% stake to Softbank in April 2006 at a valuation of £1.5 billion, and bought the racing publisher Timeform in December 2006.Source: Wikipedia

Betfair floated on the London Stock Exchange on 22 October 2010 at £13 a share, valuing it at £1.4 billion, according to Wikipedia. Companies House shows the parent renamed Betfair Group PLC on 7 October 2010, which fits that listing, and back to a limited company on 2 February 2016, the day the Paddy Power merger completed.Sources: Wikipedia; Companies House

Wikipedia says Betfair moved some operations to Gibraltar in March 2011 to cut its tax bill and launched a fixed-odds sportsbook in May 2012. The Paddy Power merger was structured as Paddy Power's acquisition of Betfair, and the group later became Flutter Entertainment.Source: Wikipedia

Companies House lists Betfair Limited as an active gambling company with a Birmingham registered office. The Commission register gives the same company a London head-office address for its software licence, so the two sources disagree on where it sits.Sources: Companies House; Companies House; Gambling Commission

1. June 2000Founded

   Andrew Black and Edward Wray found Betfair (Wikipedia).

   Source: Wikipedia
2. 28 May 2004Betfair Limited incorporated

   The operating company is incorporated in England.

   Source: Companies House
3. 22 October 2010London listing

   Betfair floats on the London Stock Exchange at £13 a share (Wikipedia).

   Source: Wikipedia
4. 1 November 2014Commission licences begin

   TSE Malta LP, Betfair Casino Limited and three PPB licensees begin holding Commission licences on this date.

   Sources: Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission
5. 2 February 2016Paddy Power merger completes

   The enlarged group is based in Dublin (Wikipedia).

   Sources: Wikipedia; Companies House
6. November 2024High Court: Gibson v Betfair

   The High Court rules for TSE Malta LP in a claim to recover gambling losses.

   Source: NEXT.io
7. 8 December 2025Court of Appeal: Gibson v Betfair

   The appeal is dismissed.

   Source: Capital Law
8. 17 December 2025Commission settlement

   Four licensees agree to pay £2,000,000 in lieu of a penalty.

   Source: Gambling Commission

Licences it holds

Where you can and cannot use it

Great Britain: yes, under the six Commission licences above. Flutter's filing says Betfair operates on a locally regulated basis in Denmark, Italy, Malta, Romania, Spain and the United Kingdom.Sources: Gambling Commission; Flutter Entertainment plc

The Gibraltar licence-holder list does not name Betfair, PPB or TSE Malta, though the Commission gives TSE Malta LP a Gibraltar address. The iGaming Ontario directory, accurate to 1 September 2026, does not list Betfair either.Sources: Gibraltar Gambling Division; iGaming Ontario; Gambling Commission

South Africa: the National Gambling Board's verified-operator list, marked updated 4 September 2026, has no Betfair entry.Source: National Gambling Board

Betfair's own site returned a 403 error and its help pages showed a browser challenge, so we do not know which other countries it serves and did not try to get round the block.Source: Wikipedia

Payments and withdrawals

We could not read Betfair's payment pages, so we cannot list its methods, limits or withdrawal times. Under licence condition 6.1.2 a Commission licensee may not accept credit cards for gambling, including through e-wallets that take credit-card top-ups, and that applies to every GB licensee above.Source: Gambling Commission

Flutter says players bet against each other, not against the group, and that the group earns commission on players' winnings net of a discount that varies with their activity. It gives no rate.Source: Flutter Entertainment plc

Wikipedia gives older detail. Its undated description gives a base commission of 5% to 7% of net winnings, reducible by up to 60% for heavy users, and describes a premium charge introduced in September 2008 for members who paid under 20% of gross profits in commission after 250 markets.Source: Wikipedia

Under condition 17.1.1 a licensee must verify a customer's name, address and date of birth before the customer gambles.Sources: Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission

Limits and safer-gambling tools

We did not read Betfair's own limit pages. Paddy Power's help centre says a deposit control set there does not carry over to Betfair, which suggests limits are set per brand.Source: Paddy Power

In Great Britain a licensee must offer a time-out of 24 hours, a week, a month or another period up to six weeks. Self-exclusion must close the account and return the funds, and the operator must remove the person from marketing within two days.Sources: Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission

The Commission's deposit-limit rules are changing. A prompt to review limits at least every six months has applied since 31 October 2025, and from 30 September 2026 new customers must be offered gross deposit limits.Source: Gambling Commission

Licence code 3.4.3 requires licensees to identify, act on and evaluate signs of harm, to flag indicators in time for manual review and to automate action on strong indicators, and the 2025 settlement says four licensees fell short of five paragraphs.Source: Gambling Commission

Drawbacks

The 2025 settlement is the main drawback. The Commission found that systems missed overnight play and fast deposits between August 2023 and May 2024. In one Betfair example a customer lost £12,300 in five weeks before review, and a failed contact brought a £500 monthly deposit limit while play continued.Source: Gambling Commission

Another customer staked £86,000 on Betfair between 18 November and 4 December 2023, losing £6,000, with four automated messages and no manual review. A third had one session of 7 hours 46 minutes, with more than 300 bets worth £20,000, and was flagged only after hitting a loss trigger.Source: Gambling Commission

The Commission counted earlier statements on similar issues as aggravating, and credited the licensees with a swift action plan and early acceptance of the failings.Source: Gambling Commission

Court cases add context but not findings of wrongdoing. Betfair won Gibson v Betfair, in which a customer claimed back £1,480,728.84 lost between 2009 and 2019, with the High Court finding no general duty of care and the Court of Appeal dismissing the appeal without deciding the duty-of-care grounds. A separate negligence claim by the family of Luke Ashton, who died in April 2021, opened in the High Court on 4 June 2026; Betfair denies liability.Sources: NEXT.io; Capital Law; RTE

Wikipedia lists earlier controversies: a 2011 admission that a March 2010 customer-data theft was not disclosed in its share prospectus, and voided in-running bets on a Leopardstown race in December 2011. Flutter reports a June 2025 data incident at its Paddy Power and Betfair businesses.Sources: Wikipedia; Flutter Entertainment plc

How it compares

Both are large British online brands, but they sell different things. Betfair's exchange lets customers bet against each other for a commission, with a fixed-odds sportsbook added in 2012. bet365 offers a conventional sportsbook and casino.Sources: Wikipedia; Flutter Entertainment plc; Wikipedia

The licence maps differ. Betfair's Commission licences sit with Malta- and Gibraltar-addressed companies, and no Gibraltar or Ontario entry names it. bet365 appears in both lists.Sources: Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission; Gibraltar Gambling Division; iGaming Ontario

The records differ in scale. Betfair's group paid £2 million in 2025 over customer interaction. bet365's two UK licensees paid £582,120 between them in 2024 over money-laundering and customer interaction, and bet365 also has Australian and New Jersey actions that none of our Betfair sources show.Sources: Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission

Read the bet365 review for the other side of the comparison.

If something goes wrong

We did not read Betfair's own complaint procedure. Licence code 6.1.1 requires a UK licensee to handle complaints in a timely, fair and open way and to let customers take an unresolved dispute to a free alternative dispute resolution body once eight weeks have passed.Source: Gambling Commission

The Commission's guide tells customers to complain to the operator first and lists account closure, voided bets and verification among the usual subjects. Its register page for each licensee, linked above, shows the entity responsible. Paddy Power's help centre separately describes its own complaint route.Sources: Gambling Commission; Paddy Power

Regulatory record

1. 7 July 2022Sweden: SEK 4.5 million

   iGaming Business reports that Sweden's Supreme Administrative Court upheld a penalty on Betfair, cut from SEK 5.5 million to SEK 4.5 million. The 2019 decision found it allowed betting on events where most participants were under 18.

   Source: iGaming Business
2. November 2024High Court: Gibson v Betfair

   The High Court dismissed all claims by a customer who sought to recover gambling losses from TSE Malta LP, trading as Betfair. It held that the operator neither breached licence conditions nor owed a general duty of care.

   Sources: NEXT.io; CMS
3. 8 December 2025Court of Appeal: Gibson v Betfair

   The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, citation [2025] EWCA Civ 1589. Losses were £1,480,728.84 between 1 November 2009 and 11 April 2019. The High Court found Betfair had no actual or constructive knowledge of a problem because the customer concealed it, and treated enforcement as the Commission's role.

   Sources: Capital Law; CMS
4. 17 December 2025UK Gambling Commission: £2,000,000

   PPB Entertainment, PPB Counterparty Services, Betfair Casino and TSE Malta LP breached paragraphs 1, 4, 7, 8 and 11 of social responsibility code 3.4.3 on customer interaction, and shared a £2 million payment in lieu of a penalty plus the Commission's costs.

   Sources: Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission
5. 4 June 2026High Court: Ashton v Betfair opens

   The family of Luke Ashton, who died in April 2021, sued Betfair in London's High Court. They allege it encouraged betting that worsened his gambling disorder. Betfair says the law does not make operators liable for customers' voluntary choices. We found no judgment.

   Source: RTE

What we could not check

• Betfair's own site: commission rates, discounts, payment methods, limits, restricted countries and complaint procedure (access-denied and challenge pages).
• Which entity runs the exchange for each customer; the register assigns betting intermediary activity to TSE Malta LP only.
• Betfair's Malta licence number and holder, and its Danish, Italian, Romanian and Spanish licences (Flutter's statement).
• The founding, listing and sportsbook dates and the older commission figures (Wikipedia).
• The date of the Gibson High Court ruling, which one trade report gives as 15 November 2024.
• The outcome of the Ashton claim, and the Commission's 2025 decision not to act on the coroner's report, which is Wikipedia's account.