UK Playing Fee is investigating Merkur, a distinguished excessive road slot machine firm, over allegations of exploiting a susceptible buyer.
Merkur, a German-owned firm working Britain’s second-largest community of grownup gaming centres, allowed a susceptible buyer with lung most cancers to lose over £2,000 in 16 hours, whereas employees reserved her favourite slot machine and facilitated her continued play regardless of her bodily situation.
The Playing Fee, empowered to levy monetary penalties on license-breaking firms, is investigating the matter.
Merkur has attributed the incident to department employees, asserting that regulatory-mandated buyer safety measures have been absolutely applied.
In keeping with its Corporations Home filings, Merkur’s revenues surged by 17% to £202 million final yr, buoyed by its UK growth efforts, which noticed the opening of 100 new venues since 2020.
Merkur, owned by Germany’s Gauselmann Group, at the moment operates 228 websites within the UK, rating because the business’s second-largest participant after Admiral Slots, owned by Austrian Novomatic.
Though Merkur’s outcomes didn’t reference the Playing Fee’s investigation, the regulator declined to touch upon particular circumstances.
Nonetheless, in an in depth portion of its outcomes assertion addressing regulatory danger and social duty, the corporate emphasised issues about potential enterprise impacts from “destructive publicity.”
Merkur and the broader slot machine sector face a pivotal second, with the corporate’s growth plans encountering native opposition, exemplified by its current withdrawal of a premises utility in Sheffield as a consequence of resident objections.
Regardless of current authorities initiatives to limit digital slot machines with decrease most stakes, there are expectations of relaxed laws on excessive road slots. Proposed reforms could allow venues to hold extra £2-a-spin machines relative to these with most £1 stakes.
Merkur declined to touch upon the matter, whereas the Playing Fee maintains its coverage of not confirming or denying investigations into particular person operators.
