Gambling Commission fines L&L Europe £900,000 over withdrawal terms

The Gambling Commission has ordered L&L Europe to pay £900,000 after finding the operator breached the Consumer Rights Act 2015, according to SBC News.

L&L Europe runs seven gambling websites, including allbritishcasino.com, casinocasino.com and hypercasino.com. Investigators found the business applied a term restricting customers to a single withdrawal at a time, a condition that repeatedly delayed payouts between October 2024 and October 2025.

Commission officials observed cases where withdrawal requests were held up for reasons that had nothing to do with legal or regulatory obligations. The regulator said this put the operator in breach of Licence Condition 7.1.1(1), which requires licensees to ensure gambling terms and consumer notices are not unfair under the Consumer Rights Act and to comply with those terms.

A separate internal policy compounded the delays. Under what the company called its Fraud & Collusion Policy, every fifth or tenth withdrawal from certain customers was subject to manual review, slowing down payment further.

L&L Europe has accepted the settlement and, the Commission said, cooperated throughout the review. The firm has since put an action plan in place and provided the regulator with updates on its progress.

Sue Young, Executive Director of Operations at the Gambling Commission, said the case sends “a clear message” that the regulator “will not fail to act” where gambling is not conducted fairly.

“As a regulator we expect consumers to be treated fairly,” Young said. “A basic expectation is that when you have winnings you can withdraw those swiftly without hindrance from unfair terms and conditions or the operator failing to carry out checks at an earlier stage. That is essential to consumer trust.”

Young added that while operators may sometimes need to request information at the point of withdrawal to meet legal obligations, that was not the justification here. “We hope this case sends a clear reminder to the industry that, although much of our enforcement action frequently relates to anti-money laundering and social responsibility failings, we will not hesitate to act when we see incidents of gambling not being fair and open.”

A breach of the Consumer Rights Act is unusual in the Commission's enforcement record, which has more commonly focused on anti-money laundering failings among licensees in recent months.

The review also uncovered weaknesses in L&L Europe's anti-money laundering policies, procedures and controls, prompting the operator to produce a new Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing risk assessment specific to Great Britain.

Social responsibility shortcomings were identified too. One 18-year-old lost £4,000 within eight minutes of registering an account, while a 21-year-old lost £6,500 within three days of signing up.

The Commission described the overall failings as serious and said they had the potential to affect its licensing objectives. L&L Europe's cooperation and remedial steps appear to have been a factor in the outcome stopping short of a licence suspension.

The case lands at a sensitive moment for the regulated sector, which is pushing back against proposals for further tax increases and tighter regulation. Episodes of this kind give additional weight to arguments made by critics of the industry, at a time when scrutiny of operators remains intense.