The UK Betting Supplier That Served an Offshore Casino Network
In 2022, Sports Information Services (SIS), the UK-based supplier of live horse racing, greyhound and esports content and settlement data, signed a two-year services deal with Santeda International. Details emerged from the Casino Secrets leak, a cache of thousands of confidential files held by the gambling regulator on Curaçao, and were reported on 1 October 2026. The Guardian
SIS is majority-owned by British bookmaking interests. Ladbrokes, William Hill and Fred Done, the billionaire owner of Betfred, together own more than 50% of SIS, with Ladbrokes holding 23%. Corporate filings put the positions at 23.4% for Entain, the owner of Ladbrokes, and 19.5% for evoke, the owner of William Hill. Next.io
Under the contract, SIS provided Santeda brands with racing and betting content for two years. Think of SIS as a wholesaler: it supplies the live pictures and the official results used to settle bets and pay winners. The agreement auto-renewed unless either side terminated it. SIS received a percentage of revenues from losing bets placed via Santeda's brands. The contract did not permit the use of SIS data in the UK. That restriction matters because Santeda's Curaçao licence does not permit it to operate in most leading regulated gambling jurisdictions, such as the UK and US.
Santeda operates an online casino network accused of illegally targeting vulnerable gamblers in Britain. It was fined in Spain for operating without a licence. Santeda International does not hold a licence from the Gambling Commission. The Guardian described Santeda in an April 2026 investigation as the secretive company behind illegal casinos appearing to target UK gamblers, and reported in December 2025 that an international betting network appears designed to profit from gamblers enrolled in GamStop, the UK self-exclusion scheme that lets people block themselves from gambling sites. The Guardian
The ownership link is indirect. Ladbrokes, William Hill and Done were understood to have been unaware of the SIS-Santeda deal when it was signed. SIS shareholders including Ladbrokes, William Hill and Done received at least £37m in dividends since the deal was signed, including £30m in 2023, according to Companies House filings. Entain said it was "not a party to the commercial or customer arrangements SIS decides to strike" and that it had raised concerns to SIS after the relationship came to light. SIS declined to say whether its deal with Santeda had been terminated. It is unclear whether the contract is still active or how much SIS earned from it.
The broader context here is about corporate distance and how regulators handle it. On paper, a content supplier licensed and owned within the regulated UK market sold settlement-critical feeds to a Curaçao-licensed operator barred from the UK, under a contract that prohibited UK use, while that operator was accused of soliciting UK self-excluded players offshore. For policymakers, the test is whether territorial clauses and shareholder passivity satisfy licensing suitability and social responsibility obligations when the downstream risk is unlicensed supply to vulnerable customers. For operators, the parallel pressure is fiscal. William Hill's owner planned to shutter about 200 UK betting shops after UK gambling tax rises, a retrenchment that followed earlier warnings that Ladbrokes, William Hill and Paddy Power would pay an extra £300 million to the UK taxman.
