Racing presenter Frankie Foster fronts campaign to raise awareness of black market gambling in Britain
The campaign aims to dissuade the government from raising the tax rate on licensed gambling, particularly horseracing betting.
UK.- The well-known horseracing presenter Frankie Foster has fronted the second in a new video series from the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) that aims to expose how easy and quick it can be to access black market gambling sites in Britain. The campaign is intended as a warning that raising taxes on regulated betting would make the problem worse.
The launch of the campaign comes just as the British Gambling Commission launched a new Illegal Gambling Hub where it intends to pool resources on the issue. The regulator has also published the first in a series of reports that aim to glean a deeper understanding of the illegal gambling market in Britain, including on consumer motivations for turning to unlicensed sites.
The Betting and Gaming Council says that around 1.5 million Brits are gambling with unlicensed sites, staking up to £4.3bn a year. It stresses that unlicensed operators pay no UK tax and openly flout UK rules.
In the video, Frankie demonstrates how easy the process is of using an unlicensed site. In less than a minute, he registers and is prompted to deposit funds and start betting without any age-verification checks.
A recent YouGov poll found that almost one in three punters would not feel confident spotting the difference between a regulated UK site and a black market one.
”The danger is clear,” the BGC said. ”Raising taxes on responsible, regulated betting firms will not generate more revenue for the Treasury. Instead, it will drive more customers towards the black market, where there are no protections, no investment in sport and no contribution to the public finances. Black market activity could already be costing the Government £335 million in lost revenue over the course of a five-year Parliament.
”By contrast, the regulated betting and gaming industry is a vital part of the UK economy. It contributes £6.8 billion in gross value added, pays £4 billion in taxes and supports 109,000 jobs in towns and cities across the country. It also has some of the toughest safer gambling rules anywhere. Each month around 22.5 million people in Britain enjoy a bet and the overwhelming majority do so safely and responsibly. As Frankie makes clear in the video, balanced regulation and a stable tax system are essential.”
BGC CEO Grainne Hurst added: “Get the balance on tax and regulation wrong and you hand a competitive advantage to the black market, where operators pay no tax, contribute nothing to British sport, and offer no safer gambling protections. The black market is growing and actively targeting UK customers. Any tax rise, whether on betting or gaming, makes that offer more attractive and puts more players at risk.”
The UK government has stressed that it has not announced any plans to increase gambling taxes. However, it held a consultation on plans to unify three separate online gambling taxes under a new Remote Gaming and Betting Duty. While the Treasury has not specified what the rate would be, industry stakeholders fear that the unification would mean more tax charged on horseracing bets.
