Why this page still exists

We took our last bet on 28 August 2026 and handed back our licence on 4 September. So why is a safer gambling page still here? A few reasons. The first is that gambling doesn’t stop being risky just because one bookmaker shuts its doors. The second is that some of you set limits or exclusions with us and deserve a straight answer about what happened to them. And the third, which we’re not going to dance around, is that the way our licence ended has a lot to do with this exact subject. So here’s what we offered while we were trading, and here’s where to turn now.

Tools we offered

Every licensed operator has to give customers a set of controls, and ours looked like this.

• Deposit limits by day, week or month, with a cooling-off wait before you could raise one
• Time-outs from 24 hours up to six weeks, during which the account simply wouldn’t open
• Reality checks that interrupted play to show how long you’d been on and how much you’d spent
• Self-exclusion for anything from six months to five years
• A link to GamStop, the national self-exclusion scheme for online gambling
• Affordability and source-of-funds checks that kicked in when account activity called for them

What the Commission said

The Gambling Commission suspended our licence after enquiries turned up what it called suspected social responsibility and anti-money laundering failings. Suspected. That’s the regulator’s word, and it matters, because we surrendered the licence before the review got to the end, so nothing was ever proven or disproven. We could spend this page arguing our side. We’d rather not. If you relied on our tools, the useful thing we can do is tell you plainly where you stand today.

If you self-excluded with us

Here’s the distinction that matters. If your exclusion was set only on your account, it died with the account. If you went through GamStop, nothing has changed at all: that registration covers every licensed online operator in Great Britain for the period you picked, and it doesn’t care whether any one company is still trading. Want to check it or extend it? That’s done at gamstop.co.uk, not through us.

If you had limits with us

Deposit and loss limits lived inside your account, and they closed with it. They don’t follow you anywhere. If you’re opening an account with another bookmaker, our honest advice is to set the same limits before you put a penny in. It takes a minute on day one, and it’s a lot harder to talk yourself out of a limit that was already there than to set one after a bad week.

Blocking tools that do not depend on us

Gamban and BetBlocker sit on your phone or computer and stop gambling sites and apps from loading, including the unlicensed ones GamStop can’t touch. Your bank can help too: most UK banks now have a gambling block for debit cards, usually a toggle in the app, with a cooling-off period before it can be switched back off. Neither of these needs anything from us, which is rather the point.

Signs worth taking seriously

Betting to win back what you lost. Staking more than you’d planned to. Borrowing to keep going. Keeping it from people close to you. Feeling restless on the days you can’t bet. Those are the things specialists ask about, and one of them on its own doesn’t mean much. When two or three show up together, it’s worth talking to someone who isn’t inside the situation with you.

Free and confidential help

The National Gambling Helpline is run by GamCare on 0808 8020 133. It’s free from any phone, open every day and every night, and there’s a live chat at gamcare.org.uk if you’d rather type. The NHS runs specialist gambling clinics across England; a GP can refer you, or you can refer yourself. Gamblers Anonymous meets in most towns and online. And if you’re worried about someone else’s gambling rather than your own, the same helpline will talk to you.

Under-18s

Nobody under 18 can legally gamble, and we checked the age on every account before paying a withdrawal. Where an account turned out to belong to a minor, we closed it and returned the stakes.

Questions about your account

Write to [email protected]. We can tell you whether an exclusion or a limit was recorded on your account, and if you need your transaction history for a conversation with a support service, we’ll send it.