The collapse of the Football Index business in the UK caused was an embarrassment for the country’s Gambling Commission, with commentators questioning the regulator’s fitness for purpose following a report on the failure by the Government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The Commission’s CEO Andrew Rhodes has responded by stating that he is “genuinely upset for those people who bet life savings and money,” before defending the regulator’s technical abilities and professional integrity. Arguably the strongest accusation levelled at the Commission is that it simply failed to understand the Football Index product. Mr. Rhodes, who was not the Commission’s CEO at the time of the collapse, responded to this by saying that “the independent report didn’t conclude that the Commission did not understand the product it had licensed but did conclude that what BetIndex operated was only partly what had been licensed by the Commission.” Denying that Football Index operated as a Ponzi Scheme, Mr. Rhodes also explained that the Commission is unable to offer compensation to those who lost out, as it has no statutory powers and no fund from which compensation might be drawn.
