Betfred: licences, history and record

Betfred is a British bookmaker that the Gambling Commission register splits across two licensees. Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited, account 39544, holds five remote licences and names betfred.com among its domains, while Done Bros (Cash Betting) Limited, account 1058, holds the shop licences, with 1,409 premises on its register summary. The Commission announced £2.87 million against the first in 2022 and £3.25 million against the second in 2023, and its register lists three further actions since May 2025.

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Pros and cons

At a glance

Online licensee in Great Britain

Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited, account 39544; head office 5.2 Waterport Place, 2 Europort Avenue, Gibraltar GX11 1AASource: Gambling Commission

Shop licensee in Great Britain

Done Bros (Cash Betting) Limited, account 1058 (the register spells it Done Brothers); head office 56-58 Benson Road, Birchwood, Warrington WA3 7PQSource: Gambling Commission

Online licences on the register

Remote bingo, casino, real-event betting, virtual-event betting and pool betting, all from 1 November 2014Source: Gambling Commission

Gibraltar

Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited (Betfred) is listed as a B2C bookmaker and gaming operator; the archived footer cites Gaming RG No. 036 & Betting RGL no. 038Sources: Gibraltar Gambling Division; Betfred

Register counts

Online company: 1 trading name, 3 domain names, no premises, 2 regulatory actions. Shop company: 1 trading name, no domain names, 1,409 premises, 1 regulatory actionSources: Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission

Regulator actions found

Commission announcements: £2.87 million (2022) and £3.25 million (2023). Register: £240,000 (May 2025), £825,000 (November 2025) and £900,000 in lieu of a penalty (June 2026)Sources: Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission

Archived homepage, 13 April 2026

21 sports, over 2,000 games from over 30 suppliers and 15 bingo roomsSource: Betfred

Last read

12 October 2026Source: Gambling Commission

Company history

The Commission register shows Betfred as two companies. Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited, account 39544, holds the remote licences and lists betfred.com, betfred.mobi and www.oddsking.com as active domains. Done Bros (Cash Betting) Limited, account 1058, lists betfred as its trading name and holds the non-remote betting and pool licences, plus an ancillary remote licence.Sources: Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission

Betfred's archived homepage footer says Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited trades as Betfred, is registered in Gibraltar with company registration number 99314, and is licensed in Great Britain under account 39544. It adds that the company is further licensed by the Government of Gibraltar and regulated by the Gibraltar Gambling Commissioner.Sources: Betfred; Gibraltar Gambling Division

The shop count moves between sources. The Commission's July 2023 article says Done Bros runs 1,432 betting shops, and notes that it corrected the figure from 1,750 because of an administrative error. The register summary we read lists 1,409 premises. We found no page that explains the difference.Sources: Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission

The company's earlier history comes only from Wikipedia (Wikipedia, secondary). It says the business began as a single Done Bookmakers shop in Ordsall, Salford, in 1967, bought the Robert Walker chain in 1997 to reach one hundred shops, first used the Betfred name in 2004, and launched Betfred.com that year. It adds that Betfred won the auction for The Tote on 3 June 2011, in a deal worth £265m. We found no primary source for these dates.Source: Wikipedia

1. 2004Betfred name and website

   Wikipedia says the Betfred name was first used in 2004 and Betfred.com launched that year (Wikipedia, secondary).

   Source: Wikipedia
2. 3 June 2011The Tote auction

   Wikipedia says Betfred won the auction to buy The Tote in a deal worth £265m (Wikipedia, secondary).

   Source: Wikipedia
3. 1 November 2014Online licences active

   Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited's remote bingo, casino, real-event, virtual-event and pool betting licences become active.

   Source: Gambling Commission
4. 28 September 2022Commission penalty, £2.87 million

   The Commission announces a penalty and an official warning for Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited, citing social responsibility and anti-money laundering failures.

   Source: Gambling Commission
5. 18 July 2023Commission settlement, £3.25 million

   The Commission announces a settlement with Done Bros (Cash Betting) Limited for social responsibility and anti-money laundering failures.

   Source: Gambling Commission
6. 20 May 2025Penalty, £240,000

   The Commission fines Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited for breaching licence condition 2.3.1 on technical standards.

   Source: Gambling Commission
7. 7 November 2025Penalty, £825,000

   The Commission fines Done Bros (Cash Betting) Limited, issues a warning and attaches an additional licence condition.

   Source: Gambling Commission
8. 30 June 2026Payment in lieu, £900,000

   Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited agrees a payment in lieu of a financial penalty after a licence review of its customer-interaction controls.

   Source: Gambling Commission

Licences it holds

Where you can and cannot use it

Great Britain: yes. Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited holds the remote licences and Done Bros (Cash Betting) Limited the shop licences. The register lists betfred.com and betfred.mobi among the online company's active domains, and the archived footer says customers must be over 18 years old to gamble.Sources: Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission; Betfred

Gibraltar: the company is on the Gambling Division's list of licence holders, which gives no licence number or country list.Sources: Gibraltar Gambling Division; Betfred

Ontario: we found no Betfred, Petfre or Done Bros entry in the iGaming Ontario operator directory, which is accurate as of 1 September 2026. We did not read Betfred's terms for any list of other countries.Source: iGaming Ontario

Payments and withdrawals

The archived homepage footer introduces a list of accepted payment methods, but our text capture shows no method names, so we cannot say which cards or wallets Betfred accepts. We did not read its deposit or withdrawal pages.Sources: Betfred; Betfred

In Great Britain, licence condition 6.1.2 bars credit-card payments for online betting. Condition 17.1.1 requires a licensee to verify a customer's name, address and date of birth before the customer gambles, and says a withdrawal request must not trigger a new information requirement if the licensee could reasonably have asked earlier.Sources: Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission; Betfred

The archived footer links a Segregation Of Funds page, which we did not read. Licence condition 4.1.1 requires customer funds to be held in a separate client bank account or accounts, and condition 4.2.1 requires the terms to say whether customer funds are protected if the licensee becomes insolvent.Sources: Betfred; Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission

Age checks sit under condition 3.2.11, which requires a licensee to verify a customer's age before the customer can deposit any funds. The 2022 Commission article lists insufficient source-of-funds checks, and the 2023 article lists inconsistent collection of source-of-funds documents.Sources: Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission

Limits and safer-gambling tools

The archived homepage carries a safer-gambling banner reading Spend. Activity. Frequency. Emotion. Always play S.A.F.E., and the archived safer-gambling page shows a Deposit Limits link in its menu. Neither shows the limit types or default levels.Sources: Betfred; Betfred

The rules are changing. The Commission's consultation response says it expects new customers from 30 September 2026 to be offered gross deposit limits, and does not expect existing customers to be changed back on that date.Source: Gambling Commission

Licence condition 3.3.4 requires every remote licensee to offer a time-out of 24 hours, one week or one month, or another period the customer reasonably requests, up to six weeks. Condition 3.5.5 requires the licensee to take part in the national multi-operator self-exclusion scheme.Sources: Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission

Condition 3.5.3 requires a licensee to close a self-excluded customer's account, return any funds held, and remove marketing details within two days of the completed notification.Source: Gambling Commission

Drawbacks

The Commission said there were no controls to prevent large levels of high-velocity spend by new customers in 2022, and one customer was allowed to lose £70,000 over 10 hours, a day after opening the account.Source: Gambling Commission

It added that interaction triggers were set too high. One customer was first contacted after depositing £20,700 and losing £10,200, and the next contact came four months later, when the customer had deposited £323,715 and lost £69,371.Source: Gambling Commission

On money laundering, the Commission said the company did not fully take account of its risks, used inadequate thresholds, gave employees inadequate training and did not conduct sufficient due diligence and source-of-funds checks. It also issued an official warning.Source: Gambling Commission

The 2023 settlement covered the shop company. The Commission said it had insufficient controls to protect new customers and to monitor high-velocity spend. It assumed winning customers were not at risk and made no safer-gambling interaction with one who staked £517,499 over two months.Source: Gambling Commission

The 2023 anti-money laundering findings were poor record keeping, alerts set too high, inconsistent collection of identification and source-of-funds documents, and undue reliance on open-source information.Source: Gambling Commission

The register adds three later actions. On 20 May 2025 it fined Petfre £240,000 for a technical-standards breach that the company had identified and reported. On 7 November 2025 it fined Done Bros £825,000, with a warning and an extra licence condition, for anti-money laundering and customer-interaction breaches between May 2024 and March 2025.Sources: Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission

On 30 June 2026 the register records a payment in lieu of a financial penalty of £900,000 from Petfre, after a licence review that followed a Compliance Assessment between May and June 2024. The review found failings in its social responsibility controls, under the code provision on remote customer interaction.Source: Gambling Commission

How it compares

William Hill also splits its British licences between an online company and a shop company. Its shop licensee, William Hill Organization Limited (account 2752), lists 1,251 premises on its register summary, against 1,409 for Done Bros. In March 2023 the Commission's article gave William Hill Organization Limited as operating 1,344 premises.Sources: Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission

Both groups faced Commission packages in 2023. William Hill group businesses agreed to pay a total of £19.2 million, which the Commission headlined as a record, while Done Bros agreed £3.25 million. Petfre's £2.87 million came in September 2022.Sources: Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission

Read the William Hill review for the other side of the comparison.

If something goes wrong

We did not read Betfred's Complaints Procedure, which its footer links. Licence condition 6.1.1 requires a licensee to let a customer take an unresolved dispute to a free alternative dispute resolution body once eight weeks have passed.Sources: Betfred; Gambling Commission

The Commission does not resolve complaints about gambling transactions, so a British customer starts with the operator. Gibraltar's Gambling Commissioner says it will not ordinarily investigate individual UK customer disputes.Sources: Gambling Commission; Gibraltar Gambling Division; Gibraltar Gambling Division

Regulatory record

1. 28 September 2022Commission: £2.87 million

   A penalty and official warning for Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited over social responsibility and anti-money laundering failures.

   Source: Gambling Commission
2. 18 July 2023Commission: £3.25 million

   A settlement with Done Bros (Cash Betting) Limited over social responsibility and anti-money laundering failures.

   Source: Gambling Commission
3. 20 May 2025Commission: £240,000

   A financial penalty for Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited for breaching licence condition 2.3.1 on technical standards.

   Source: Gambling Commission
4. 7 November 2025Commission: £825,000

   A financial penalty, a warning and an additional licence condition for Done Bros (Cash Betting) Limited after a licence review.

   Source: Gambling Commission
5. 30 June 2026Commission: £900,000 in lieu

   A payment in lieu of a financial penalty for Petfre (Gibraltar) Limited after a licence review of its customer-interaction controls.

   Source: Gambling Commission

What we could not check

• Betfred's current odds, markets, terms, limits and payment methods. betfred.com could not be read directly, and the archived pages we used show menu and footer text only for the terms and safer-gambling pages.
• Whether the history on Wikipedia is accurate. We found no primary source for the 1967 first shop, the 1997 and 2004 dates or The Tote auction.
• The reason the shop count fell from 1,432 in the Commission's 2023 article to 1,409 on the register summary we read.
• Betfred's complaints procedure, the dispute body it uses for British customers, and the countries it accepts customers from outside Great Britain.