Research shows spike in UK bettors using black market gambling sites during World Cup

An investigation conducted for the BGC shows 250,000 visited unregulated sites in December.

UK.- The Betting and Gaming Council has reported a spike in the number of UK bettors visiting unregulated gambling sites during the World Cup. According to research from Yield Sec, 250,000 people visited unregulated, black market sites from the UK in December, a rise from 80,000 in the same month in 2021.

The BGC said research showed a similar jump in November, suggesting that the rise in visits to black market sites was linked to the Qatar World Cup. It also noted that online traffic to sites advertising services to problem gamblers who had self-excluded from UK operators rose almost 83 per cent. All British Gambling Commission-regulated operators integrate with the self-exclusion system GamStop.

The report by Yield Sec states: “Non-GamStop sites have generated 82.68 per cent more visits from 26.88 per cent more unique customers during Nov-Dec 2022 compared to the previous two month period, spending on average 78 per cent more time on site.”

It said that more than 64,500 vulnerable players searched for black market sites offering betting which circumvents GamStop during the two-month period. The research also highlighted peaks in traffic to black market sites in March during Cheltenham and June during Ascot, indicating that horse racing is also being heavily targeted by unlicensed gambling operators.

Overall, the number of visits to black market websites from the UK increased by 46 per cent in 2022, with around 148,000 customers accessing illicit sites each month. Separate research by PwC previously found the number of customers using unlicensed betting websites more than doubled, from 210,000 in 2019 to 460,000 in 2020.

The BGC warned that it takes less than 30 seconds to sign up to a black market site before placing a first bet, compared to an average of 12 minutes with a regulated UK operator. This is because UK operators must conduct strict identity and age verification checks to prevent problem gambling and fraud, it said.

BGC CEO Michael Dugher said: “This research exposes the dire threat the growing unsafe, unregulated black market poses to punters.

“While the regulated industry was going to great lengths to protect young people during the World Cup and adhering to strict regulations and promoting safer gambling, black market operators were preying on the vulnerable.

“These unlicensed sites offer none of the safer gambling tools promoted by our members, they pay no tax and employ no one, they do not contribute a penny to sport or services tackling gambling harm, and they do nothing to protect vulnerable players.

“This data shows the World Cup drove a range of worrying gambling trends in the UK – not in the regulated sector as predicted by anti-gambling prohibitionists, but in the unsafe unregulated black market online.

“There has been too much complacency about the threat of the black market. Rather than dismissing the problem, the regulator and the government need to tread extremely carefully and resist blanket, intrusive affordability checks at low levels that push even more punters to these dangerous sites.”

Yield Sec founder and CEO Ismail Vali said: “This trend of increased illegal gambling activity during prominent sporting events reflects the ever-present threat that illegal operators pose to players and the audience.”

The BGC restated that the number of betting adverts shown on TV during the World Cup group stages fell by 34 per cent compared to the World Cup in 2018. Under its members’ voluntary whistle-to-whistle ban, TV betting commercials cannot be shown from five minutes before a match kicks off until five minutes after it ends, before the 9pm watershed.

A report last year found that the ban had led to a 97 per cent reduction in the number of such ads being seen by children at that time.

The BGC held its fourth AGM yesterday (Thursday, January 26). The event was hosted by Times Radio presenter John Pienaar and a keynote address was delivered by the DCMS minister responsible for gambling, Paul Scully MP.

Early last month, Scully said the UK government’s long-delayed gambling white paper would be published “in a few weeks” but it has not yet been published.