Bet365 Announces Leaving Chinese Sports Betting Market

With plans to concentrate on long-term and sustainable revenue in other areas, one of the biggest gambling brands in the world, Bet365, has stated that it was terminating its operations for sports betting in China.

Photo: Bet365’s logo (screenshot: youtube.com/@DrummondCentral)

Bet365, a global online gambling operator, stopped accepting sports wagers from Chinese gamblers on March 27. A growth strategy in legal markets, such as the US and Brazil, will be pursued by the UK firm instead of China.

Bet365, seen as the best gambling operator worldwide by many specialized iGaming magazines and constantly ranked in the top 5 bookmakers, declared in an email sent to Chinese consumers on March 19 that it would now concentrate on “core markets and regions that provide long-term sustainable revenue”.

The UK-based business was established in 2001 and has long held a shady position in China. Except for Macau and Hong Kong, two special administrative areas (SARs), gambling is absolutely forbidden in China’s mainland. Nevertheless, as UK sports betting became saturated, Bet365 apparently looked for unregulated markets, and a 2024 Financial Times piece referred to China as a “cash machine”. Although it contributed less than 20% of Bet365’s first income in the Asian nation, China was likely the company’s second-largest market after the UK.

China Censors Thwarted with Use of “Mirror Sites”

According to a Business Insider report from 2022, Bet365 was a significant participant in China’s “shadowy world of online gambling”. To avoid being discovered by authorities, they and other well-known operators employed dozens of mirror sites run by subsidiaries. New websites appeared to take their place as soon as monitors discovered and blocked the old ones.

However, Bet365 has consistently denied violating Chinese law or endangering Chinese customers, who risk penalties and imprisonment for engaging in unlawful gambling. Representatives of the company kept stating that no law specifically forbids offshore operators from providing remote gaming services in China. According to Bet365 and its attorneys, offshore gaming providers are allowed to offer their services in China under Chinese law.