Kenny Alexander and Lee Feldman were among the 11 defendants to delay their pleas at Southwark Crown Court on charges including variously: conspiracy to bribe, cheating the public revenue, fraudulent trading, evasion of income tax and others.
Those two, the ex-CEO and ex-Chairman of GVC Holdings respectively, are the highest profile names in what is sure to be a high-profile case; however, those gathered in Court One are still no wiser as to whether the defendants intend to plead guilty or not.
The session began with a request to delay arraignment, with certain issues around the formalisation of the Crown Prosecution Service's case still to be ironed out, though provisional trial preparations were made nonetheless.
The scale of the material gathered by the prosecution was a talking point, with fears that effective execution of a trial could become unmanageable if the material was not thinned out.
The defence also raised a question over a lack of particularisation with some of that material and asked that more care be taken to tether material to be used as evidence to specific issues in the case.
In principle, the Judge agreed on both of these matters.
At Westminster Magistrates Court last month, the presiding magistrate suggested it was inevitable that any trial would end up taking place in Leeds.
While the Crown Court Judge understood that this was due to certain activities related to the case taking place within the North East judicial circuit, he deemed that on "on balance of convenience and justice," any trial ought to continue in Southwark.
The sheer amount of defendants, solicitors and lawyers involved seemed to present too many practical availability issues to take the case north.
The defendants were split into three groups, with trial one, including Mr Alexander and four others, provisionally scheduled to begin on 14th February 2028 and run for four months.
The second group of five would follow in October 2028, with a trial provisionally set to run for three months.
Finally Mr Robert Hoskin, over whom the charge of perverting the course of justice hangs, would face a trial on his own starting in March 2029 if he were to plead not guilty.
The allegations involved in these cases were originally investigated by HMRC in 2019 regarding activities said to have taken place between 2011 and 2018.
Entain made a payment of nearly £600m ($788m) in 2023 to HMRC as part of a deferred prosecution agreement.
The defendants involved in the current case would all be tried as individuals with no relation to Entain.
GVC Holdings rebranded itself in 2020 as Entain PLC and is now governed by CEO Stella David
