IDnow, a Europe based provider, has seen a significant spike in the number of gambling customers requesting identity verification.
Between 14 and 16 June, IDnow saw a 750% increase in the number of players being verified with a European gambling operator. The busiest sign-up day was 14 June, the day of the opening match of UEFA EURO 2024, which saw a much higher volume of verification requests than was seen during the 2022 World Cup.
Roger Redfearn-Tyrzyk, vice president of Global Gaming at IDnow, said: “The challenges operators face during major sporting tournaments are not necessarily any different to their regular daily compliance hurdles, but the sheer volume of new players from all around the world, coupled with increased activity is likely to cause issues for unprepared operators.”
“EURO 2024 will be a huge opportunity for gambling platforms, new and old, so it’s essential they capitalise on the event, while safeguarding their players and their reputation. It’s important they have effective, compliant verification processes in place to onboard vast numbers of players as smoothly and safely as possible.”
The surge in gambling activity has been seen on both regulated and unregulated sites, with the UK alone having over 250,000 people visited unregulated, black-market sites during the last World Cup, compared with just 80,0000 during the same timeframe of the previous year.
Other key security concerns that are exacerbated by major sporting events, such as EURO 2024:
Increase in site traffic
Unsecured public Wi-Fi networks
Rising rates of gambling fraud
Concluding, Roger Redfearn-Tyrzyk, said: “Gaming operators in these particular regions must offer secure player onboarding, deposits and withdrawals, and conduct seamless Anti-Money-Laundering and age verification checks to help fight the expected proliferation of fraudulent activity in both the build up to EURO 2024 and throughout the tournament.”
