Closed
Kick Online Entertainment S.A (‘Kick’)
14 May 2025
3 July 2025
We are investigating whether Kick has failed to comply with illegal content risk assessment duties.
Sections 9 and 23 of the Online Safety Act 2023.
Ofcom has today closed its investigation into Kick’s compliance with its duty to carry out and/or keep a written record of its illegal content risk assessment (‘ICRA’) in respect of the service Motherless.com.
The investigation into Kick was originally opened after Ofcom received no response to an information notice requesting the written record of the ICRA.
Following further correspondence, Kick provided the written record of the ICRA to Ofcom. As such, Ofcom does not consider it appropriate to continue our investigation. We have therefore closed it without making any findings as to Kick’s comspliance with its duties.
In particular, Ofcom has not taken a view as to whether the written record of the ICRA provided by Kick for Motherless.com is suitable and sufficient as required by section 9 of the Online Safety Act 2025 (the Act), nor have we taken a decision about any other aspects of Kick’s compliance with the Act.
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.
Enforcement team (riskassessmentprogramme@ofcom.org.uk)
CW/01296/05/25