MGA cancels The Daily Fantasy Football Company’s licence

The Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) has cancelled The Daily Fantasy Football Company's B2C gaming service licence after ruling that the operator breached a number of its regulations.

The Daily Fantasy Football Company will no longer be able to carry out gaming operations, register new players or accept new customer deposits, with the ruling coming into immediate effect,

However as stated by the regulator, the operator must retain and provide all of its registered players with access to their accounts, as well as refund all funds standing to the credit of customers.

According to the MGA, The Daily Fantasy Football Company breached Regulation 9 of the country’s Gaming Compliance and Enforcement Regulations.

Specifically, these relate to a person or operator failing to meet commitments to players in a timely manner. The MGA said “such failure is imminent following the €3,483.89 liabilities incurred by the authorised person towards player funds”, but did not go into further detail about the charge.

The regulator also noted that the operator failed to pay relevant tax, compliance and true-up alignment contributions to the MGA in a timely manner.

The Daily Fantasy Football Company, which had been operating Playthesix.com and Thefantasyfootball.com under its Malta licence, will have the option to appeal against the MGA’s decision.

The latest ruling comes after Blackrock Media last month paid a €2.3m financial penalty to the MGA operating a gaming service without necessary authorisation. The penalty was applied after joint investigations by the MGA and the Executive Police found the company was processing payments for unlicensed gaming operations.

Also last month, the MGA suspended Zero Seven Gaming Limited’s gaming services licence after failing to submit player funds reports and licence fees.