Gambling Commission finds no evidence of rise in engagement with illegal gambling in UK
The regulator has published the second in a series of reports on the illegal gambling market in Great Britain.
UK.- The British Gambling Commission has published the second in its series of reports examining the illegal gambling market in Great Britain. Following the launch of the Gambling Commission’s Illegal Gambling Hub last month, the latest report focuses on trends in consumer engagement with illegal gambling websites.
Based on the data available so far, the regulator has found that there is no evidence of an overall pattern of growth. It observed an increase in engagement with illegal gambling sites between summer and winter of 2024, but engagement then dropped following this uptick.
At the end of this period, engagement was back at a similar level to the start, suggesting that there is no evidence of an overall increase in consumer engagement with illegal gambling websites, the regulator said.
The regulator’s head of data innovation hub Tim Livesley wrote: “We are often told this market is constantly growing – and definitive claims are made about what is driving this – but sustained growth is not visible in our data.”
However, he stressed that this does not mean the regulator will dismiss the threat of unlicensed gambling. Livesley added: “This finding – which we are still treating as indicative – should certainly not be taken to mean we don’t believe there is still a serious problem that we will continue to tackle. This market presents a risk to consumers, and we will use data to work harder and smarter to disrupt it.
The report draws on data collected automatically over the past 15 months. The data focuses on illegal gambling websites available to consumers directly through search engine results and from links on affiliate marketing websites, with a mix of traditional gambling products – such as slots, casino and betting – as well as more recently developed offerings – such as crypto casinos.
Challenges in measuring engagement with illegal gambling
The regulator made assumptions around virtual private network (VPN) usage and recognised that some aspects of online illegal gambling are not fully captured by its approach – such as apps which may facilitate illegal gambling.
It plans to make improvements to the way it uses the data to report trends, including more analysis to better understand the margins for error associated with web traffic estimates. It said it would welcome opportunities to collaborate with licensed operators to verify accuracy of estimates. It also intends to collect data over a longer period of time to assess whether fluctuations are seasonal or part of a longer-term trend.
The regulator stressed the difficulty in measuring engagement with the unlicensed sector. Livesley wrote: “Generating accurate and reliable estimates is challenging. When exploring an activity that is illegal, and therefore hidden, there are very few known facts. We have made estimates based on the best data available to us and have been clear about margins for error and caveats.
“Another reason why it is difficult to estimate trends in this market is its dynamic nature – there is a constant flux of websites exiting the market and new ones replacing them. As a result of disruption actions, the websites that are used most frequently today are not the same as those which saw the highest traffic a few months ago. Obtaining historic trends is a challenge as we are not looking at a stable set of websites.”
The Gambling Commission will publish more about its work with data later this year. This will include further analysis on the impact of disruption activity and exploration of the methods and challenges of estimating levels of expenditure associated with online illegal gambling. The next publication on illegal online gambling will explain more about its enforcement work and the impact of targeted disruption.
