Investigation into Kick Online Entertainment S.A’s compliance with illegal content risk assessment duties

Background 

On 3 March 2025, Ofcom opened an enforcement programme to monitor whether providers of regulated services across the sector have complied with their duty to complete, and keep a record of, an illegal content risk assessment. These duties came into force on 16 March 2025 and, for user-to-user (‘U2U’) services, are set out in sections 9 and 23 of the Online Safety Act 2023 (‘the Act’). For further information please see our Enforcement Programme.

As part of this programme, Ofcom requested records of the illegal content risk assessments, to assess their compliance with the Act. Records were requested from a range of providers of in-scope services. Kick was one of those providers, in respect of the U2U service Motherless.com (‘Motherless’). As of today, Kick has not provided a copy of its illegal content risk assessment written record for Motherless.

Investigation 

Today, 14 May 2025, Ofcom has opened an investigation into Kick.  

In light of Kick’s failure to respond to an information request notice issued under section 100 of the Act requiring it to send Ofcom a copy of its illegal content risk assessment written record for Motherless, Ofcom is investigating if Kick has complied with its duties to:

• carry out an illegal content risk assessment of Motherless, as required by section 9 of the Act, and:
• make and keep a written record, in an easily understandable form, of all aspects of every illegal content risk assessment, including details about how the assessment was carried out and its findings, as required by section 23 of the Act.

Ofcom’s investigation will therefore examine whether Kick has failed to comply with its statutory duties in relation to its illegal content risk assessment. Ofcom will provide updates on this page as we progress this investigation.

Alongside this investigation, Ofcom has today opened a separate investigation into Kick’s compliance with a statutory information request. The bulletin for this investigation can be found here.