Politics Home | The gambling sector’s unlicensed market claims don’t match the evidence

Two recent inquests have exposed the most disturbing consequences of Britain’s illegal online gambling market. This year coroners concluded that gambling disorder contributed to the suicides of Ollie Long and Ellen Mulvey, two people who had actively tried to escape gambling but ended up on illegal sites.

Both had first become addicted through legal online casinos and had tried to quit by using the self-exclusion tool GamStop. Nearly 700,000 people struggling with gambling harm have signed up to GamStop, which blocks access to any legal British gambling site. Yet illegal casinos deliberately use “casinos not on GamStop” as a marketing tool, luring people such as Ellen and Ollie back into harm.

A new research report prepared this month by the intelligence platform Gaming Compliance International (GCI) for my Campaign for Fairer Gambling shows that both the regulated and unregulated online gambling sectors grew between 2024 and 2025. The regulated market remains overwhelmingly dominant, accounting for around 91 per cent of online gambling revenue, while the unregulated sector accounts for less than 9 per cent.

This data also suggests that casino-style gaming, rather than betting, is the main driver in the unregulated sector, with 75 per cent of unregulated gambling revenue coming from gaming products. This challenges trade claims that affordability checks on sports and racing bettors are the main drivers of illegal market growth.

The scale of the problem has also been exaggerated. If we consider the whole GB gambling market including land-based and the lottery, the illegal portion equates to only around 4 per cent. Excluding underage and self-excluded gamblers reduces it to less than 2 per cent. That is smaller than the gambling market in Northern Ireland, despite the province having no dedicated regulator and outdated gambling laws.

It is therefore fascinating that an All-Party Parliamentary Group for Action Against Illegal Gambling has just been set up. Vice-chairs Esther McVey MP and Neil CoyleMP, aided by secretariat Jordan Lea of Deal Me Out, have an opportunity to prove to be reliable independent voices by avoiding parroting the trade lines. 

Despite the attention illegal casinos receive, the reality is that Britain still has one of the smallest unregulated online gambling sectors of any major jurisdiction globally. Trade voices are forecasting that by 2028 unregulated turnover will reach £33bn and present this as an existential threat to the regulated sector.

But turnover is not revenue. My campaign to reduce the stakes of Fixed Odds Betting Terminals (FOBTs) resulted in a turnover decrease of £25bn in the first year (2019-20) but a much smaller revenue decrease of £750m. Those opposing that harm reduction move forecast that betting shop numbers would decline to 4,500. There are still over 5,600 betting shops, despite the pandemic and bookies pushing conversion from land-based to online.

The Treasury has awarded the Gambling Commission £26m to tackle illegal gambling. No longer led by Andrew Rhodes, who has left to become a gambling sector adviser, the Commission is using the funds to establish an illegal gambling task force under DCMS whose membership remains secret.

Mr Rhodes and other executives at the Commission have a history of attending and speaking at trade events where many of the participants are unlicenced operators and suppliers, or representatives of jurisdictions hosting those unlicenced sites.

So many people, including parliamentarians, worked so hard to get the Conservatives’ Gambling White Paper done, but DCMS delegated some projects to the Commission. If the Commission had been less friendly to the gambling sector in the resulting consultations, would Mr Rhodes have been as welcome in his new role?

Despite their expertise, GCI is not on the task force, and neither is Gamban, the premier self-exclusion tool. Gamban can block both legal and illegal sites from all devices when activated, but was recently refused funding under DHSC from the £120m per year statutory levy, raising questions about DHSC oversight in that process.

The task force should start by asking why many illegal sites are still accessible from Britain despite being known to DCMS. It should also look into whether companies licensed by the Commission are in business relationships with illegal sites.

It is the same addictive content on illegal sites as on legal ones. Illegal electronic roulette is still electronic roulette. Changing a name from Super Silly Slots to Silly Super Slots does not change the games.* Gamblers have no guarantee that the games are fair, winnings will be paid or deposits will be protected.

The deaths of Ollie Long and Ellen Mulvey should change the conversation. We need to move on from abstract discussions about “safer” or “protected” gambling. The same marketing techniques and algorithms operate across both sectors. The totality of harm is greater in the regulated sector, which remains the primary gateway to illegal gambling. Any serious strategy to reduce harm must acknowledge that reality.

* Game names invented for illustrative purposes