Bet365 denies illegally taking bets in China

A report by U.K newspaper the Guardian has accused international betting firm Bet365 of illegally taking bets from Chinese nationals, some of whom have allegedly been arrested for interacting with the company’s betting site. Under Chinese law, gambling is illegal and a criminal offense. However, it is debatable whether companies based outside of the Mainland fall under its jurisdiction.
Bet365 is one of the most successful privately owned betting companies in the world, with revenues of $1.28 billion in 2013. The Guardian report, which was based on documents submitted to the UK Gambling Commission, foreign media stories, and interviews with former employees, claims that only about half of this revenue is derived from countries where Bet365 is officially licensed.
That Bet365 is popular in China is not news, and the company declined to respond in detail to the accusations except to provide a statement saying, “Bet365 takes its legal and regulatory obligations very seriously and is licensed to undertake its activities by relevant regulatory authorities across a variety of jurisdictions and is compliant with all applicable legislation. There is no legislation that expressly prohibits the supply of remote gambling services into China by operators who are based outside China. Bet365 has no people, assets or infrastructure in China and does not engage any agents, aggregators or intermediaries, for any purpose, in China … Any allegation of illegality on the part of bet365 is therefore untrue.”
The company does reportedly have a large Chinese-speaking customer support base in the U.K., but claimed that it is the responsibility of affiliates based inside the PRC to assess the legality of their activities.
The bookmaker recently applied for a continuation of its license under the new U.K. licensing regime, which requires any entity to disclose details of business in markets from which it derives more than 3 percent of its revenue, and declared that it has “shared with the Gambling Commission the legal bases underpinning the business derived from all the group’s material markets”. However, the Group also announced last week that it was relocating its online operations to Gibraltar in a bid to streamline its corporate structure and will be operating under a license granted by the government of Gibraltar.