Betting Sites Not on GAMSTOP — the Honest Guide for 2026

Updated October 2026

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The phrase “betting sites not on GAMSTOP” promises a category that, for a player in Great Britain, does not really exist. Every online bookmaker holding a Gambling Commission remote licence is a GAMSTOP member by licence condition; the self-exclusion service has been a mandatory requirement since 31 March 2020, and there is no carve-out for new entrants, premium brands or offshore cousins. The real question a searcher has to answer is what they are actually looking for: a route around a self-imposed block, a market the scheme does not cover, or simply a different experience inside the licensed market. This page sets out how GAMSTOP works, where its edges are, what a player gives up by stepping outside the licensed perimeter, and how the ten reviewed bookmakers compare inside it.

Data current as of 27 October 2026, checked against the Gambling Commission’s public register and the GAMSTOP site.

How GAMSTOP actually works, and why no licensed site sits outside it

GAMSTOP is a free, national online self-exclusion scheme covering websites and apps operated by gambling companies licensed in Great Britain. It is run by The National Online Self Exclusion Scheme Limited, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 10504973 and based in Harrogate. When a customer signs up to GAMSTOP, the scheme shares that fact with operators so they can block access to existing accounts and refuse new ones for the chosen period. Operators licensed by the Commission are required to check the register each time a customer logs in or tries to register.

The minimum period a player can choose is six months. Longer options are one year, five years, or a five-year term that renews automatically at the end of each five-year cycle. None of these expire on their own: the six-month block is the floor, not a release date. Auto-renewal keeps the exclusion rolling into a fresh five-year minimum unless the customer intervenes. To deactivate an exclusion after the minimum period, the customer must contact the GAMSTOP Contact Centre; once they do, a 24-hour cooling-off period applies before the block lifts. After the block ends, operators continue to be told for seven years that the person was previously self-excluded, though they are not required to refuse access on that basis alone.

That is the point most searchers miss. A “betting site not on GAMSTOP” inside the GB market would be a site that ignores the register, and a site that ignores the register is a site that does not hold a Commission remote licence. The two go together: the licence conditions and codes of practice (LCCP) make participation a condition of holding the licence, not a choice each operator makes individually. Anything marketed as “outside GAMSTOP but still British” is, at best, a misdescription, and at worst a site whose licence status needs checking against the Commission’s public register.

The register lists more than 550,000 people as users of the scheme, a figure GAMSTOP itself cites. The number matters because it sets the scale of what a self-excluded player is looking to bypass — half a million people, one national block, every licensed brand.

Where GAMSTOP stops, and what those gaps actually contain

GAMSTOP covers online sites and apps run by GB-licensed operators. It does not cover the National Lottery, scratchcards bought in a shop, or — in the gambling sense — pools, arcades and any activity that does not sit under a remote betting or remote gaming licence. Betting shops, the high-street bookies, are covered by a separate service called GAMSTOP Betting Shops, not by the online register. A customer who has excluded online can still walk into a licensed betting shop and place a bet there; the LCCP require a shop to ask for ID and to enforce its own social responsibility checks, but the shop-side block is a different sign-up.

The non-gambling gap matters less than the marketing implies. Spreads, novelty markets, and lotteries are outside GAMSTOP, but the licensed online bookmakers that hold a remote general betting standard (real events) licence cover almost everything a punter actually bets on: football, horse racing, tennis, golf, cricket, in-play, bet builders, each-way. Esports are treated like any other real event. Virtual events, by contrast, sit under a separate licence category. None of this opens a route past a self-exclusion that is set against the right brand.

What it does is frame a question the page does not pretend to answer: why the search for “not on GAMSTOP” exists at all. The honest read is that some of it comes from players who registered with GAMSTOP, changed their mind inside the minimum period, and now want out. The terms do not allow that — the minimum period runs its course. Other searchers are after a softer “no verification, no checks” experience that the licensed market does not offer, since 7 May 2019. Those are different conversations, and they end in different places: the first inside GAMSTOP’s own deactivation process, the second outside the licensed market altogether.

The legal frame: what a Commission licence actually buys, and what it costs

Great Britain has no state monopoly on gambling and no cap on the number of licences. Since the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014, an operator whose remote facilities are used in Great Britain needs a Commission licence wherever it is based, under sections 33 and 36 of the Gambling Act 2005 as amended. A Curaçao, Malta or Gibraltar authorisation is not a substitute where British customers are being targeted. Providing facilities for gambling in Great Britain without the required licence is an offence under section 33 of the 2005 Act; the offence sits with the operator, not the customer. No offence aimed at a customer who merely bets on an unlicensed site was identified in the framework the Commission publishes, and this page does not claim that using such a site is legal. The honest framing is that the player loses the protection, not the right.

The Commission’s public register is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number. It is the whole test of whether a brand holds a licence. The Commission’s register is also where the GAMSTOP membership of a remote operator is visible: every remote betting licence-holder is on it. Licensed operators use both .com and .co.uk addresses, so the domain proves nothing on its own — a .co.uk is not a guarantee of British regulation, and a .com is not evidence of being offshore.

What the licence buys, in plain terms:

• A working dispute route. A complaint that cannot be resolved with the operator can be taken to an approved alternative dispute resolution (ADR) body, and ultimately the Commission can act.
• A self-exclusion that holds across brands. GAMSTOP applies to every licensed site, so one sign-up blocks them all.
• A financial vulnerability check and a deposit-limit regime under the LCCP. The check, in force since 30 August 2024, applies when a customer’s net deposits exceed £150 in a rolling 30 days, and is a public-record check (bankruptcy, county court judgments), not a credit check.
• A 10x cap on bonus wagering requirements, in force since 19 January 2026, so a £10 bonus at 50x is no longer on offer at any licensed brand.

What it costs, in plain terms:

• Identity verification before the first deposit, every time. A new customer must pass name, address and date-of-birth checks before they can deposit or place a bet, and the check applies to free bets and bonuses as well as cash stakes.
• A ban on credit-card deposits, in force since 14 April 2020; credit-card-funded e-wallet top-ups are also caught.
• Source-of-funds questions at higher spend, run under the operator’s anti-money-laundering duties.
• The disappearance of mixed-product offers, banned under the same 19 January 2026 promotion rules. An offer that asks the customer to bet on football to get free spins, for example, can no longer be advertised by a licensed brand.

Offshore, none of the above applies. There is no GAMSTOP coverage, no Commission complaints route, no approved ADR body, and no British consumer redress if funds are withheld. The 10x bonus cap and the £150 vulnerability check do not apply. Enforcement is disruption, not blocking: cease-and-desist notices, search-engine referrals, work with registrars, hosts and payment providers. The Commission has been given, or is about to receive, court-order DNS blocking powers. None of this is framed as “the safe choice” or “the unsafe choice” — it is a list of what changes when a customer leaves the licensed perimeter.

Responsible gambling: the tools every licensed bookmaker has to offer

GAMSTOP is the bluntest of the safer-gambling instruments. Around it, every licensed remote betting operator must offer a working set of player-controlled tools. The headline ones are deposit limits, product restrictions (closing whole product categories such as casino or slots while keeping sports), time-outs, and self-exclusion at the operator level. The LCCP social responsibility code requires these to be easy to set, easy to reverse at the customer’s request, and not buried under marketing. Unibet’s safer-gambling page, for example, lists deposit limits, a Player Profile test, product restrictions and self-exclusion alongside live-chat support and direct links to BeGambleAware, GamCare, GAMSTOP, Gambling Therapy and the Betting and Gaming Council.

Beyond the operator-level tools, the Commission’s vulnerability check sits at a threshold rather than at signup. The financial vulnerability check (LCCP condition 3.4.4) runs when a customer’s deposits minus withdrawals cross £150 in any rolling 30-day window, a change that took effect on 28 February 2025; the check is a public-record search, not a credit reference and not an income test. The wider “financial risk assessment” the press calls affordability checks has been announced in a staged plan, with no start date as of mid-2026; the right description is “announced, staged, no start date”, not “in force”.

Deposit limits under RTS 12 are part of the same package. Operators must offer a gross deposit limit on a fixed time frame; the first changes applied on 31 October 2025, a second phase was postponed to 30 September 2026, and whether that second phase is live has not been established. There is no state-set deposit or loss ceiling in Great Britain: any limit a customer sees is the customer’s own choice, set inside the operator’s product.

Help, when a customer hits a wall, runs through GamCare (which runs the National Gambling Helpline), GambleAware, the NHS gambling clinics network, and Gamblers Anonymous. These are not the operator’s tools and they do not need the operator’s permission to use. The responsible-gambling footer on every licensed UK betting site links out to them.

The arithmetic of “what an offer really costs” sits inside this block of the page because it is part of what a licensed bookmaker is. The expected cost of a £500 monthly budget staked once across an illustrative two-way market at decimal odds 1.90 / 1.90 — a representative even-money line, not a quoted price — runs in a band rather than a single number. The market’s payout share at 1.90 / 1.90 is 1 ÷ (1/1.90 + 1/1.90) = 0.95, and the margin (the slice the bookmaker keeps of every unit staked) is 1 − 0.95 = 0.05, or 5%. Staked once across £500, the expected loss is £500 × 0.05 = £25. The band is £25 on average if every pound of the budget is wagered exactly once and the line is held at 1.90 / 1.90 for the full month; longer or shorter lines change the figure in either direction, and the budget itself is an illustration, since Great Britain has no state-set deposit or loss ceiling. The number is the book’s edge on that budget, not a forecast of what any one punter will lose.

The reviewed bookmakers: what sets each one apart, and where each one falls down

This is not a ranking. A Gambling Commission account number is not a score, and a place in a comparison is not a licence. Every brand below holds a Commission remote licence for real-event betting, every one is a GAMSTOP member, and every one is described in the language of its own terms. The angle is choice: ten paths inside the licensed market, each with a different shape, each suiting a different kind of punter. The verdict at the end of each block is the editor’s read of who gets the most from that brand — and, just as plainly, who should look elsewhere.

The Commission’s public register is the test for each of these, not the table. A customer who wants to verify a brand should search by business name or account number on the Commission’s register; the table above is the editor’s summary, the register is the licence.

Ladbrokes — the long-running generalist, on and off the Exchange

Ladbrokes is published in the GB App Store by Entain Operations Limited, and the App Store rating of 4.66 across 101,255 ratings is one of the more travelled reference points in the table. The licence sits with LC International Limited under Commission account 54743, on the same platform that runs Coral, and that corporate overlap is worth noting: Ladbrokes and Coral share an Entain stack, and the choice between them is rarely about price.

Where Ladbrokes earns its slot is breadth. Football, racing, in-play, bet builder, acca insurance — the menu is full and the limits are high. The brand’s weak spot is the same as the wider market’s: a standard welcome offer rather than a standout one, and a deeper customer-journey for casino than for sports, since the parent runs a larger gaming estate. A punter who wants depth on racing and football, and who is happy to use a “best odds guaranteed” concession rather than chase promos, gets the most out of Ladbrokes. A punter hunting a heavy welcome package should look at the smaller, promo-led brands further down this list.

Betfair — the exchange-cum-sportsbook, and what the dual platform actually buys

Betfair’s sportsbook sits beside the betting exchange that runs the same brand, and the dual setup is the headline difference. Commission account 39439 is held by PPB Counterparty Services Limited, and the sportsbook’s app page lists in-play, Bet Builder, free live streaming of UK and Irish horse racing and football, and a 90 Minute Payout market that settles at the 90-minute mark regardless of extra time. The exchange is a separate product: back and lay, with rates set by the market rather than by the book, and a commission structure that the exchange terms describe.

The verdict depends on which Betfair the punter actually wants. The sportsbook rewards the customer who wants an in-play, streaming, bet-builder experience with a familiar interface; the exchange rewards the customer who wants to lay bets and trade positions, with the sportsbook as a fallback. Both are inside the same Commission account, both are GAMSTOP members, both share the same safer-gambling infrastructure. The 90 Minute Payout market is a useful specific: it lets a football bettor close out at the regulation scoreline, which matters in cup ties that go to extra time and penalties. The risk of treating Betfair as one product is paying sportsbook margin on a market the exchange would have priced tighter.

BetTom — a small welcome book, with a slot-funds twist

BetTom’s welcome package is a 50%-back-as-a-free-bet offer up to £50, paired with a matching 50%-back-as-free-slot-funds offer up to £50. The first is a sportsbook product: the free bet is settled against the stake the customer would have lost on the qualifying bet, with the stake itself not returned. The second is a casino product, and under the 19 January 2026 promotion rules a licensed operator cannot require a sports bet to unlock a casino bonus. The “matching” framing here is two separate offers stacked, not one mixed-product promotion: a punter who wants the slot funds has to opt in separately.

BetTom’s licence sits with Bet Tom Limited under Commission account 64959. The brand is small relative to the listed names above it, and that has practical consequences. The app’s market depth is narrower, especially in-play and on smaller leagues, and the customer-journey is less polished. The trade-off is a free-bet welcome that is larger, in proportion, than what Ladbrokes or bet365 tends to run. The verdict: BetTom is the right pick for a punter who places a small first bet, values the welcome size, and is content with mainstream markets. A punter who needs depth on the lower leagues, or a polished bet builder, gets more from a larger book.

William Hill — the long money on payments, and the FCA carve-out

William Hill’s payments page is one of the more useful reads on this list. Debit card deposits and withdrawals are accepted from £5; the maximum per-transaction deposit is £99,000 and the maximum per-transaction withdrawal is £33,000; the operator charges no fee on debit card transactions. That is a set of numbers worth keeping, because the upper end is the difference between a book that suits a small-stake punter and one that takes a serious stake. The licence sits with WHG (International) Limited under Commission account 39225.

The FCA detail matters. Financial spread betting at William Hill is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, not by the Gambling Commission, and the firm states that spread betting losses can exceed deposits. That is the FCA’s territory: the FCA regulates the financial product, the Commission regulates the fixed-odds sportsbook, and the two sit on different rule books. A punter who plans to use the financial spread side needs to read the FCA terms as well as the Commission’s; a punter who only wants the sportsbook is on the Commission side and inside GAMSTOP.

The verdict: William Hill is the right pick for a punter who wants a high deposit ceiling, a long-established brand, and a payments page that does not bury the numbers. The weak spot is the brand’s slow modernisation of its app compared to the newer entries in this list, and the spread-betting side is a different product with its own risk profile.

Bet600 — qualification by volume, not by stake

Bet600’s welcome offer asks for five qualifying singles of £10 or more at evens (2.0) or greater within the first seven days of registration, after which one £10 free bet is credited. The arithmetic is the headline: a customer has to place five £10 singles at minimum decimal odds of 2.0, which is an outlay of at least £50 across the week, before unlocking one £10 free bet. The expected cost of clearing depends on the market the punter picks; on a 1.90 / 1.90 even-money line the margin is 5% (as in the calculation above), so the expected cost of £50 of qualifying bets is around £2.50, before the £10 free bet is added to the account. The free bet’s value, assuming decimal odds of 3.0 on the bet the punter chooses, is £10 × (3.0 − 1) / 3.0 × 0.95 = £6.33, again on average and at the market’s payout share.

The licence sits with Tyche Tech Limited under Commission account 44731. Bet600 is a small, qualification-heavy welcome, and the right customer is a punter who already plans to place five singles in the first week, sees the offer as a bonus on the way, and is happy with mainstream markets. A punter who wants a one-bet welcome gets a better fit elsewhere on the list.

DragonBet — the Welsh angle, with a wider menu behind it

DragonBet’s app is published by DragonBet Ltd, and the home screen leads with Welsh football and rugby, racing, American football, in-play, and bet builder markets. The licence is Commission account 64908. The Welsh-football angle is the headline: a book that prices the Cymru Premier and the Welsh rugby regional games as first-class events rather than niche lines is a different proposition for a Welsh punter than a generic sportsbook. The wider menu is also there — racing, in-play, the same bet-builder framework as the bigger books — but the brand’s edge is its local pricing.

The verdict: DragonBet suits a punter who follows Welsh football or rugby, and is happy to take the rest of the menu as secondary. The brand’s app is smaller in market depth than the leading books on the lower English leagues, and the welcome offer is less generous than some. A punter who does not care about Welsh sport should look elsewhere.

BetMGM — the international brand, on a LeoVegas stack

BetMGM’s UK app is published by LeoVegas Gaming PLC, and lists Commission account 39198. The BetMGM name is the international one; in Great Britain the operator of record is LeoVegas. The brand is part of the wider MGM Resorts family, and the UK app pulls that loyalty into its product — the sportsbook and the casino sit in the same app, with cross-product mechanics that the operator’s terms describe. The trade-off is that the same app carries the same 19 January 2026 promotion rules as the rest of the licensed market: no mixed-product offers, 10x cap on bonus wagering.

The verdict: BetMGM is the right pick for a punter who wants a sportsbook and a casino in one app, with a single sign-up, and who values the international brand. The brand’s UK sportsbook is newer than the rest of this list, and the depth on the lower leagues is thinner. A punter who only wants a sportsbook gets a deeper product from a longer-established book.

Dabble — the social-style book, with a small-bet welcome

Dabble’s welcome is a £10-in-free-bets offer on a £10 first deposit, with minimum odds, a seven-day free-bet expiry, and the stake not returned on a free-bet win. The brand’s product leans social: a feed-style interface that lets customers follow tipsters, copy bets, and chat inside the app. The licence sits with Dabble Sports UK Ltd under Commission account 65677.

The verdict: Dabble suits a punter who likes the social-feed model and is happy with mainstream markets. The brand’s social angle is a different shape from the more traditional sportsbooks, and the welcome is a small-bet offer, not a heavy one. A punter who wants a deep, traditional book with a polished bet builder should look at bet365 or Betfair.

bet365 — the most-downloaded app, and a partner of the Champions League

bet365 is the official global betting partner of the UEFA Champions League, and the GB App Store page describes the app as the most downloaded sports betting app in the UK. The licence sits with Hillside (UK Sports) ENC under Commission account 55148. The brand’s strength is the in-play and streaming product: live streams of football, tennis, basketball and other sports, an in-play interface that runs fast, and a depth of markets on Premier League, Champions League, NFL and the major racing meetings that few of the listed brands match.

The verdict: bet365 is the right pick for a punter who lives in-play, who values the streaming product, and who follows the major leagues. The brand’s app is denser than the smaller books on the list, and the welcome is not the headline — the product is. A punter who only bets on small-stake singles on niche markets gets a less crowded experience elsewhere.

Bet Ahoy — a small book, with a sports-acca split welcome

Bet Ahoy’s welcome is the familiar Bet £10, Get £10 in Free Bets shape, but split into a £5 sports single and a £5 acca. The licence sits with Bet Ahoy Ltd under Commission account 100094. The brand is small, the menu is mainstream, and the welcome is built around a first acca as much as a first single.

The verdict: Bet Ahoy suits a punter who plans to place a first acca and wants the free-bet split to match. The brand’s depth is narrower than the leading books in this list, and the welcome is modest. A punter looking for a heavy welcome or a deep book gets more from a longer-established brand.

How the choices line up — the practical map of the ten

Read across the table above and the shape of the licensed market is clear. The long-running generalists — Ladbrokes, William Hill, bet365, Betfair — own the in-play, the streaming, the bet builder and the high deposit ceilings. The smaller books — BetTom, Bet600, Dabble, Bet Ahoy — own the welcome offer, the qualification by volume, the social-feed angle, and the small-first-bet customer. The specialists — DragonBet on Welsh sport, BetMGM on the international brand and the casino-sportsbook bundle — sit between the two, and serve the punter whose main interest lines up with their headline. None of the ten is “not on GAMSTOP”; every one is a GAMSTOP member, and the route through the table is a route inside the licensed market.

The trade-off that recurs is welcome size versus product depth. A punter who wants the largest free bet gets a smaller book, a narrower menu, and a faster qualifier; a punter who wants the deepest product gets a smaller welcome, a higher ceiling, and a slower path to the first free bet. The right answer is the punter’s own, and the table is what the punter reads before making it.

The arithmetic from earlier in the page — the £25 expected cost on a £500 budget at 1.90 / 1.90, on a 5% margin — applies to every book on the list. The number changes with the line the punter takes (a 1.50 / 2.50 line has a different margin), with the market (a 1X2 football market is not the same as a totals market), and with how often the budget is staked. A punter who places £500 once across a month is not the same as one who places £100 five times. The 5% margin is the book’s average edge on a representative two-way line; the rest is up to the bettor.

Practical steps for a punter inside the licensed market

The practical order a punter goes through, when they want to be sure they are betting inside the regulated perimeter:

1. Search the Commission’s public register by business name, trading name, domain or account number. The register is the licence. If the brand is not on it, the brand does not hold a Commission remote licence, and the routes that follow — GAMSTOP, ADR, the £150 vulnerability check, the 10x bonus cap — do not apply.
2. Read the operator’s safer-gambling page before signing up. A licensed book must list deposit limits, time-outs, self-exclusion, product restrictions and the links to GamCare, GAMSTOP, GambleAware and the National Gambling Helpline.
3. Set a deposit limit at sign-up. Operators must offer one; the figure is the punter’s choice, and a fixed time frame (daily, weekly, monthly) is the operator’s duty under RTS 12.
4. If a self-exclusion is what the punter wants, register with GAMSTOP. The minimum period is six months; the next tier is one year, then five years, then five years with auto-renewal. The deactivation is not automatic at the end of the period; the customer contacts the GAMSTOP Contact Centre, and a 24-hour cooling-off applies.
5. After signup, complete the identity check before the first deposit. Name, address and date of birth are verified; the check applies to free bets and bonuses as well as cash stakes.
6. If a complaint cannot be resolved with the operator, the punter can take it to an approved ADR body. The Commission’s register lists the ADR providers for each operator.

The order matters. The register check sits first because the rest of the route only applies if the brand is licensed. The safer-gambling tools and the deposit limit sit next, before any stake is placed, because the limits are easiest to set at sign-up and hardest to live by afterwards. The identity check sits before the first deposit because the operator cannot accept a deposit until the check has passed. The complaint route sits last because it is the route a punter hopes not to take.

What the page does not cover

A page on “betting sites not on GAMSTOP” is also, necessarily, a page on what those sites are not. The licensed market does not include a no-verification book, an anonymous-play book, or a book that does not check the GAMSTOP register. The route past a self-imposed block does not run through the licensed market at all; the only routes the page points to are the ones the scheme’s own terms describe — the deactivation after the minimum period, the 24-hour cooling-off, the seven-year post-exclusion flag.

What the page does not do is recommend a way around GAMSTOP. The owner decision that frames the comparison is licensed cards only; no unlicensed brand is listed, and nothing on the page explains how to step past the scheme. The ten brands are the licensed options; the route around is the reader’s own, and the page is not part of that conversation.

Frequently asked questions

Are there any betting sites that are not on GAMSTOP?

No online bookmaker holding a Gambling Commission remote licence sits outside GAMSTOP, and participation is a mandatory licence condition. Any site marketed as “not on GAMSTOP” is either unlicensed in Great Britain or not what the marketing claims. The Commission’s public register is the test.

What betting sites are not on GAMSTOP in the UK?

The licensed UK betting sites are all GAMSTOP members, by licence condition. The market that the search describes — a licensed British bookmaker that ignores the register — does not exist. Operators with a non-GB licence are not regulated by the Commission, are not bound by the LCCP, and are not part of the comparison.

Does GAMSTOP cover every betting site licensed in Great Britain?

GAMSTOP covers every GB-licensed online operator, and that coverage is a mandatory condition of the licence. The scheme does not cover the National Lottery, scratchcards, or betting shops (which use a separate service called GAMSTOP Betting Shops).

What does a player lose by betting on a site without a Gambling Commission licence?

The player loses GAMSTOP coverage, the Commission’s complaints route, an approved dispute-resolution body, and British consumer redress if funds are withheld. The licensed market’s player-protection rules — the 10x bonus wagering cap, the £150 financial vulnerability check, the credit-card deposit ban — do not apply. None of this makes the site illegal to use; it makes the protections disappear.

How can a customer check that a bookmaker holds a Gambling Commission licence?

The Commission’s public register is searchable by business name, trading name, domain or account number, and is the whole test of whether a brand holds a licence. A match on the register is the licence; a miss is the absence of one. The register is the document to read before any deposit.

Which tools for controlling play does a licensed bookmaker have to offer?

A licensed remote betting operator must offer deposit limits, time-outs, self-exclusion at the operator level, and product restrictions, with the links to GamCare, GAMSTOP, GambleAware and the National Gambling Helpline on the safer-gambling page. The Commission’s vulnerability check and the operator’s anti-money-laundering duties sit alongside the customer’s own controls.

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