Gambling Commission to publish UK black market report in spring 2025

The Gambling Commission will publish an extensive report on the size of the UK black market in spring 2025 as the regulator revealed the methodology behind its new research.

The regulator said its current methodology, using a combination of web traffic data and gambling behaviour data, had allowed the body to estimate the GGY of the unlicensed market.

However, to provide an “accurate estimate” of the illegal sector’s size is “very challenging”, according to the regulator.

As a result, the Gambling Commission laid out a multi-prong approach to how it hopes to ascertain the size of the illegal market in the UK.

The regulator said it had reviewed existing research and engaged with several stakeholders and its consumer voice programme to best shape its new approach to data collection.

The current methodology includes monitoring Google search results, including keywords such as “not on GAMSTOP” which would appeal to self-excluded customers.

The Gambling Commission said: “A combination of Google Trends and Similarweb’s keyword generator are then used to identify the most popular search terms by traffic. The top five pages of Google results for each search term are collected to ensure the majority of traffic is captured.”

The regulator is also reviewing affiliate sites or articles hosting and promoting unlicensed operators, with links to illegal operators being extracted to obtain web traffic data.

To be able to generate a GGY figure, the Gambling Commission is combining web traffic data with existing data on consumer behaviour in the regulated market.

However, the regulator recognised that gambling behaviours in the black market could be different to the regulated arena, where data suggests average GGY per minute for online slots is £0.32.

Other existing limitations with the outlined study include not being able to log web traffic data for customers using VPNs.

Additionally, the existing GGY estimates are based off of data from 2018 and 2019, and only corresponds to online slots as per the Patterns of Play study.

The Gambling Commission said its initial research into the black market had allowed it to “scale up our online detection of unlicensed sites” and build up an estimate of the scale of the sector.

In reality, this means the Gambling Commission has issued 750 cease and desist and disruption notices since April.

The regulator has also referred more than 78,000 URLs to Google, with 50,000 of them being removed by the search engine. A further 225 websites have been taken down.

The Gambling Commission is also now working with Microsoft to bring its referral process with Google to the tech giant’s search tools, including Bing and Yahoo Finance.

The body is also working on data sharing and collaboration with regulators in the Netherlands, Hungary, the US, Nigeria and Australia.

White-label offerings are also being put under the microscope via the regulator’s work with the International Association of Gaming Regulators.

In terms of improvements to the study, the Gambling Commission said it was “interested” in exploring social media search results and encrypted communication apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram.

The regulator also pointed to potential gains in its methodology from deeper research into streaming sites such as Kick and Twitch, as well as tapping open banking to gain further insight.

The Gambling Commission noted: “This work, however, is just a starting point. We have ambitions to continue to grow and improve our use of data in relation to this topic.

“To improve the current methodology, we will add additional search term themes that reflect consumer motivations not captured within our phase one model.

“[We will also] incorporate questions on the Gambling Survey for Great Britain to better understand the behaviour of consumers who use these unlicensed sites that will help to address the assumptions made in the GGY estimate.”

As well as expanding the study, Gambling Commission CEO Andrew Rhodes said the body’s cease and desist letters would now move to target the “growing trend of prize draws and competitions” after concerns were raised by government bodies.

Rhodes said: “The focus of our illegal markets plan will be improving processes, particularly by developing new workflows to address closed group illegal offerings.

“A new cease and desist process will be introduced to target the growing trend of prize draws and competitions, which has raised concerns across several departments, including HM Revenue and Customs, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the National Crime Agency (NCA).”

A Betting and Gaming Council-commissioned report from Frontier Economics suggested as many as 1.5 million Britons are staking £4.3bn on the black market each year.

The post Gambling Commission to publish UK black market report in spring 2025 first appeared on EGR Intel.