Ladbrokes: licences, history and record

Ladbrokes is a British bookmaker that traces its name to 1902 and its shops to the 1960s. Entain plc owns it, and the Gambling Commission lists two Ladbrokes-linked licensees. The Commission announced penalty packages for the group in 2019 and 2022, and Entain agreed a £585 million deferred prosecution agreement in 2023.

We have no commercial arrangement with any operator on this site at the time of writing. The Visit buttons are marked as sponsored links so that they stay correct if that changes.

Pros and cons

At a glance

Founded

1886 (Wikipedia, secondary)Source: Wikipedia

Online betting licensee in Great Britain

LC International Limited, account 54743, Gibraltar addressSource: Gambling Commission

Shop licensee

Ladbrokes Betting & Gaming Limited, account 1611, 2,680 premisesSource: Gambling Commission

Owner

Entain plc, which completed its purchase of Ladbrokes Coral in March 2018 as GVC HoldingsSources: Wikipedia; Crown Prosecution Service

Other licences read

Gibraltar, licence numbers RGL 010 and RGL 012 named in the UK termsSources: Ladbrokes; Gibraltar Gambling Division

Not on the register

Ontario directory lists other Entain brands but not LadbrokesSource: iGaming Ontario

Regulator actions found

Commission: £5.9m (2019), £17m (2022); parent: £585m deferred prosecution agreement (2023)Sources: Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission; Crown Prosecution Service

Last read

3 October 2026Source: Gambling Commission

Company history

According to Wikipedia, Messrs Schwind and Pennington founded Ladbrokes in 1886 as commission agents for horses trained at Ladbroke Hall in Warwickshire. The name Ladbrokes dates from 1902, when Arthur Bendir joined the partnership and the business moved to London. Mark Stein and his nephew Cyril Stein bought it in 1956 for a reported £100,000.Source: Wikipedia

Betting shops became legal in 1961 and Ladbrokes floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1967. Wikipedia says its shop count grew from fewer than 50 to 1,135 between 1967 and 1973. The group also owned casinos, hotels and racecourses, bought Hilton International in 1987 for £645 million, and renamed itself Hilton Group in 1999 before selling the hotels in 2006 and returning to the Ladbrokes name.Source: Wikipedia

The Competition and Markets Authority identified 642 local areas where a Ladbrokes and Coral merger would harm competition, and said 350 to 400 shops would have to be sold. The merger completed on 2 November 2016 as Ladbrokes Coral Group. GVC Holdings then bought the group, and that deal completed in March 2018.Source: Wikipedia

The Entain annual report 2025 describes a group of more than 35 brands and reports group revenue of £5.3bn for the year. GVC Holdings took the name Entain plc in December 2020, according to the deferred prosecution agreement. Entain recorded a £487.7m impairment on its UK business in 2025 after the Budget changes to gambling duty.Sources: Entain plc; Crown Prosecution Service

Companies House lists Ladbrokes Betting & Gaming Limited, number 00775667, as incorporated on 1 October 1963, with Ladbrokes Limited as a previous name. Its UK terms say the online business is LC International Limited, a Gibraltar company, number 46808, which also runs bwin, Coral, Foxy Bingo, Gala and other brands.Sources: Companies House; Ladbrokes

1. 1886Founded

   Schwind and Pennington start as commission agents for horses trained at Ladbroke Hall (Wikipedia).

   Source: Wikipedia
2. 1967London listing

   Ladbrokes floats on the London Stock Exchange (Wikipedia).

   Source: Wikipedia
3. 2 November 2016Merger with Coral

   The Ladbrokes and Gala Coral merger completes and the group becomes Ladbrokes Coral Group (Wikipedia).

   Source: Wikipedia
4. March 2018GVC completes its purchase

   GVC Holdings completes its acquisition of Ladbrokes Coral (Wikipedia).

   Source: Wikipedia
5. December 2020GVC becomes Entain

   GVC Holdings plc is renamed Entain plc.

   Source: Crown Prosecution Service
6. 5 December 2023Deferred prosecution agreement

   Entain signs a four-year agreement with the Crown Prosecution Service and pays £585 million in penalty and disgorgement.

   Source: Crown Prosecution Service

Licences it holds

Where you can and cannot use it

Great Britain: yes, under the two Commission licences above. The Ladbrokes help centre separates account verification into pages for the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and a rest-of-world group it labels Gibraltar and Jersey, and it keeps three sets of terms, for the UK, Ireland and all other countries.Sources: Ladbrokes; Ladbrokes

Ontario: the iGaming Ontario directory, accurate to 1 September 2026, lists 49 operators and 84 sites. ElectraWorks Maple Limited appears with bwin, PartyCasino, PartyPoker, Partysports and Sports Interaction, and the Gibraltar register names ElectraWorks under Entain Group. The directory has no Ladbrokes entry.Sources: iGaming Ontario; Gibraltar Gambling Division

Ladbrokes' own website did not open from our location, so we cannot say which other countries it accepts customers from. We list the licences it names and do not infer the rest.Source: Ladbrokes

Payments and withdrawals

The help centre's payment-method pages cover Google Pay, Pay by Bank, Apple Pay, bank transfer, Maestro, Mastercard, PayPal, paysafecard and Visa. For Google Pay it gives GBP 5 minimum and GBP 5,000 maximum for both deposits and withdrawals, and says no fees apply to Google Pay deposits.Sources: Ladbrokes; Ladbrokes

UK customers cannot fund an account by credit card. The help centre dates the rule to 14 April 2020, and the Commission confirms the ban and its basis in licence condition 6.1.2. From 15 July 2020 it also bars debit or prepaid cards issued by money service businesses, naming Transferwise, N26 and Post Office travel cards.Sources: Ladbrokes; Gambling Commission

Ladbrokes states a £2,000 cap on a single deposit for UK customers, across all payment methods. It also limits UK accounts to three active payment methods over a rolling 30 days, a cap that does not apply in Ireland. Payment methods must be registered in the customer's own name, and a third-party method can lead to a frozen account.Sources: Ladbrokes; Ladbrokes

Withdrawals first go to an internal review team, which must approve them. Ladbrokes runs what it calls a closed-loop system: money returns to the methods used to deposit. Its example says a customer who deposited £100 by Visa and £50 by Apple Pay must send £100 back to the card before taking more than £50 to Apple Pay.Source: Ladbrokes

Processing times run from instant to five banking days depending on the method, and these are added to Ladbrokes' internal processing time. Bonus funds cannot be withdrawn until the offer's restrictions are met. The help centre also says identity verification must be complete before winnings can be withdrawn.Sources: Ladbrokes; Ladbrokes; Ladbrokes

Limits and safer-gambling tools

Deposit limits can be daily, weekly, monthly or a mix. Daily limits run from 00:00 UK time, weekly limits from Monday and monthly limits from the first of the month. The longest period must carry the highest limit. Decreases apply at once, and increases take effect only after a 24-hour confirmation delay.Source: Ladbrokes

The UK terms say Ladbrokes offers time-outs and deposit and other financial limits. Self-exclusion lasts at least six months, and a customer can ask for it to cover Ladbrokes only or all Entain brands. Remaining funds are returned within ten working days, and an excluded account cannot be reopened before the period ends.Source: Ladbrokes

The terms also say the operator may suspend or close an account, and accounts held with its other brands, if it thinks the customer is at risk of gambling harm. GAMSTOP, the national self-exclusion scheme, is named in the same section.Source: Ladbrokes

The Commission's rules on deposit limits are changing. New customers from 30 September 2026 must be offered 'gross' deposit limits, and a prompt to review account information and limits at least every six months has applied since 31 October 2025. We did not read how Ladbrokes has applied either change.Source: Gambling Commission

Drawbacks

The enforcement record is the main drawback. The 2022 announcement lists customers who deposited large sums with thin source-of-funds checks: £742,000 in 14 months for one, and £524,501 between December 2019 and October 2020 for another. We could not read evidence of what has changed since.Source: Gambling Commission

The terms give Ladbrokes wide rights. It can decline to pay when a software error or wrong price appears, even if the problem is not obvious to the customer, and maximum payout limits apply to some products. A separate clause says it owes no duty of care over its own safer-gambling compliance.Source: Ladbrokes

The payment rules add friction. The £2,000 deposit cap, the three-method limit and closed-loop withdrawals suit one debit card most easily. A customer who mixes methods may have to route money through each one before taking it where they want.Sources: Ladbrokes; Ladbrokes; Ladbrokes

A further risk sits with the parent. Entain's 2025 report records shareholder claims arising from GVC's former Turkish-facing business and a provision for the Australian regulator AUSTRAC proceedings. These concern the group, not a Ladbrokes account, but they bear on who stands behind it.Source: Entain plc

How it compares

Both are long-established British bookmakers with a shop estate and an online business, both licensed in Great Britain and Gibraltar, and both subject to Commission penalty packages. Ladbrokes' register page lists 2,680 premises, against 1,250 on William Hill's.Sources: Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission

The licensing structure differs. Ladbrokes' online betting sits with LC International, which carries 14 active trading names, while William Hill's remote real-event betting licence sits with William Hill Organization Limited and a Gibraltar company, WHG (International) Limited, holds further licences. Neither brand appears in the Ontario directory we read.Sources: Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission; iGaming Ontario

The records differ in size. The Commission's 2022 announcement was £17m for Entain, set against £19.2m for three William Hill group businesses in 2023. Entain also carries a £585 million deferred prosecution agreement, which has no William Hill equivalent in the sources we read.Sources: Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission; Crown Prosecution Service

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

If something goes wrong

For a UK account, Ladbrokes says it acknowledges a complaint within 24 hours and sends a final position by email within eight weeks. If it stays unresolved, the customer can take it to IBAS, the Independent Betting Adjudication Service, within twelve months of the dispute arising. Customers outside the UK can write to the Gibraltar Gambling Commissioner.Source: Ladbrokes

The Commission's register pages for LC International and for Ladbrokes Betting & Gaming show no regulatory actions, while its 2019 and 2022 announcements name those operations. We report both as read and do not reconcile them.Sources: Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission; Gambling Commission

Regulatory record

1. 31 July 2019UK Gambling Commission: £5.9m

   The Commission announced a package including £5.9m for Ladbrokes and Coral failings between November 2014 and October 2017. GVC paid £4.8m in lieu of a penalty and divested £1.1m. One Ladbrokes customer lost £98,000 over two and a half years without a social responsibility interaction.

   Source: Gambling Commission
2. 17 August 2022UK Gambling Commission: £17m

   Entain agreed to pay £17m: £14m for LC International and £3m for Ladbrokes Betting & Gaming. The Commission added licence conditions for board oversight and a third-party review within 12 months, and said it was the second time this operator had broken the rules.

   Source: Gambling Commission
3. 21 December 2022Advertising Standards Authority: upheld

   The ASA upheld a complaint about a promoted Ladbrokes tweet from October 2022 showing three Premier League footballers, finding that the people shown were likely to have strong appeal to under-18s.

   Source: Advertising Standards Authority
4. 5 December 2023Crown Prosecution Service: £585m agreement

   Entain plc agreed a deferred prosecution agreement on four counts under section 7 of the Bribery Act 2010, with £585 million in penalty and disgorgement, £10 million in costs and a £20 million charitable payment. Entain's 2025 report links it to GVC's legacy Turkish-facing business.

   Sources: Crown Prosecution Service; Entain plc

What we could not check

• Ladbrokes' own website, odds, cash-out rules, bonus terms and restricted countries (the site would not open for us).
• Whether the £2,000 deposit cap and other help-centre figures are current; the help pages carry their own dates, one as old as 2022.
• Which Ladbrokes entity serves customers in each country beyond what the UK terms say.
• What the Commission's 2022 conditions and the deferred prosecution agreement's remedial actions have changed in practice.
• Any regulator outcome outside Great Britain that this page does not list.