GambleAware Receives $14.6M for H1 With Bet365 as Top Donator

United Kingdom-based gambling awareness charity GambleAware has gotten a total of $14.6 million in donations for the first half of 2021.

Bet365, Entain and William Hill Ahead of Others

These donations are a part of an important cause. Bet365, Entain and William Hill and Flutter vowed to provide GambleAware with no less than $137 million by the end of 2023. The money will be used for relieving gambling harm and helping bettors suffering from addiction and/or other irresponsible tendencies.

The charity asked betting operators whose offerings are available to British customers to provide at least 0.1% of their yearly gross gambling yield. Smaller companies (ones whose annual revenue doesn’t exceed $344,000) can instead donate a minimum of $344. Here is how much Britain’s gambling leaders actually donated.

The most charitable donator is the British online gambling company Bet365 which singlehandedly donated more than a third of the total sum. The operator’s total donation for the first six months of the fiscal year sits at around $5.8 million, or almost 40% of the total sum donated for this period. The $5.8 million figure is a significant year-to-year increase as last year Bet365 mustered only $3.1 million for the same period.

Entain comes second in the list of top supporters of GambleAware’s cause. The operator donated about $2.7 million in the first quarter of the year but refrained from adding more in the second.

William Hill comes up third with $1.4 million donated, refuting gambling opponent’s claims that the operator only cares about hooking bettors.

Other Bookmakers Also Contributed

Other operators also showed solidarity with GambleAware’s goal of mitigating gambling harm. These include Unibet, Playtech, Videoslots and Zecure Gaming, White Hat Gaming, One Click, and STS.Bet. The aforementioned operators donated $126,000, $71,000, $69,000, $69,000, $64,000 $31,000 and $30,000 respectively.

Some other operators such as Star Racing and Virgin Bet preferred making two smaller donations at different points of the fiscal year’s half. Star Racing funded GambleAware’s cause with an initial payment of $27,000, followed by a bigger one worth $36,000. Virgin bet, in turn, first gave $23,000 and then a slightly bigger sum of $24,000.

Putting the total funding into perspective, it is worth saying that this H1 funding exceeds half of what was pledged during the totality of the previous fiscal year ($26 million). This is to be expected as 2020 was a difficult year for businesses because of the raging COVID-19 pandemic. The virus isn’t gone but businesses have managed to adapt, which is attested by the higher donations this year.