- High Court dismissed Gibson’s £1.5M Betfair gambling loss case.
- Appeal claims Betfair ignored signs of excessive gambling behavior.
- Case could redefine betting firms’ duty of care obligations.
A British property tycoon who failed in his first attempt to sue Betfair for the £1.5 million he lost gambling on the platform has taken his case to the appeals court.
Lee Gibson, 47, from Leeds, England, blew the money placing more than 30,000 soccer bets on Betfair’s betting exchange between 2009 and 2019 when his account was suspended. He first filed suit against the operator in September 2021 in the London Circuit Commercial Court, arguing that Betfair should have realized he had a gambling problem and intervened.
‘No Duty of Care’
The claim was dismissed in November 2024 by High Court Judge Nigel Bird. who observed that Gibson had at no point informed Betfair that he had a gambling problem.
On the contrary, he repeatedly assured staff that he was in control of his betting and could afford his losses, explaining he was a multimillionaire.
The judge added that there was no real indication the extensive financial information Gibson supplied to Betfair was materially inaccurate. As a result, there was nothing objectively alarming about the scale of his losses — while substantial, they appeared to be sustainable.
Bird also determined that Betfair had no duty of care toward Gibson because he had not entered into a self-exclusion program or asked that any formal restriction be placed on his gambling.
“A successful gambler should not be deprived of the fruits of his bet, but equally in my judgment, a losing gambler should not be able to escape the consequences of his decisions,” he added.
Judge ‘Wrong’ Says Lawyer
But during opening arguments at the Court of Appeal, Gibson’s lawyer, Yash Kulkarni KC, argued the lower court judge had been wrong and doubled down on the claim that Betfair knew more about his client’s gambling than it was prepared to let on.
“The judge ought to have found that Betfair knew or ought to have known that Mr Gibson was likely to be a problem gambler throughout the material time of the claim and his finding otherwise was plainly wrong,” he said.
“Mr Gibson placed at least 20,000 individual bets in the six years prior to 22 January 2021, which is more than five per day,” he continued.
The judge ought to have gone on to find that where a person appears likely to be gambling prolifically despite facing heavy losses, using money which appears likely to be at least in part from selling his business assets or loaning money against them, that person is likely to be a problem gambler, he argued.”
The case is being closely watched as it could clarify the extent to which betting companies are legally responsible for identifying and protecting problem gamblers, even among high-value clients.
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