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"Football stock market" platform has license suspended

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Class465pacer

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Football Index, a gambling platform that has described itself as a "stock market of football" has appointed administrators and has had its license suspended by the Gambling Commission. This could lead to thousands of people losing their "investments" in the platform.
From The Guardian:
The Gambling Commission has suspended the operating licence of Football Index, the self-styled “stock market of football”, a few hours after the beleaguered betting company announced on Thursday that it had suspended “trading” on its platform.
Football Index: customers' money trapped after platform is suspended
The Gambling Commission said in a statement on Friday morning that the operating licence of BetIndex Ltd, the Jersey-based parent company of Football Index, had been suspended following “an ongoing section 116 review into the operator, as we had concerns activities may have been carried out in purported reliance on the licence, but not in accordance with a condition of the licence, and that Football Index may not be suitable to carry on with licensed activities.”
The statement added: “We have made it clear to the operator that as the investigation progresses, we expect it to focus on treating consumers fairly and keeping them fully informed of any developments which impact them.”
For the moment, Football Index’s licence has been suspended rather than revoked pending the outcome of the Gambling Commission’s investigation. After a series of crashes in the overall value of its market since September 2020, however, most recently after an 80% cut in the “dividends” paid out when players performed well, it is difficult to see any way it can survive.
Thousands of account holders with Football Index, who have staked tens of millions with the firm to buy what it described as “shares” in leading footballers, will now fear that their last hope of retrieving any money trapped in the platform has vanished.
Anger grows as Football Index issued new shares in players days before major changes
It could be weeks or months before the scale of losses in Football Index becomes clear, but it seems certain to be the biggest failure that Britain’s regulated gambling industry has seen.
Its model – seen by some customers as “safer” than betting with a traditional bookmaker – encouraged users to deposit and gamble large sums and then wait for dividend returns, in the expectation that they could also retrieve funds by selling their “shares” to other users should they so wish.
The market’s liquidity evaporated during recent collapses, however, leaving money trapped in the market unless users accepted huge losses on their stakes. It now seems almost certain that all outstanding stakes - by one estimate, at least £60m – will be lost.
The two Championship clubs, Nottingham Forest and Queens Park Rangers, who had Football Index as their shirt sponsors revealed on Friday that they were dropping the logo with immediate effect.
 
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yorksrob

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All I seem to get these days are online gambling adverts. A sign of the desperation of 21st century existance.
 
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