The UK Gambling Commission has published the second instalment in its ongoing series of reports on the illegal online gambling market in Great Britain. Introduced by Tim Livesley, Head of the Data Innovation Hub, the study sets out both the Commission’s developing methodology and its initial findings from a 15-month data collection exercise. The conclusion is striking: despite persistent claims that the illegal market is constantly expanding, the Commission has found no evidence of sustained growth in consumer engagement with unlicensed websites.
Yet the lack of growth should not be mistaken for stability. The report makes clear that the market is in constant flux, with sites disappearing under enforcement pressure and new ones emerging to take their place. For regulators and licensed operators alike, the challenge lies less in combating inexorable expansion and more in responding to a highly agile and adaptive set of competitors.
A data-driven approach
Livesley frames the analysis in terms of the Commission’s wider corporate strategy: using data to make regulation more effective. The primary objective is disruption, making it as difficult as possible for illegal operators to offer gambling at scale in Great Britain. Closer integration between data analysts and enforcement teams has already delivered operational benefits.
Automated intelligence gathering allows the regulator to focus its resources on taking down the highest-traffic sites quickly, while improving the frequency of data collection means the Commission can track the rise of new entrants in near real-time.
The methodology centres on building a clear picture of the websites consumers in Great Britain are actually visiting. To achieve this, the Commission developed a list of search terms based on consumer research, enforcement intelligence, and industry engagement. These terms reflect motivations that drive people to seek out illegal sites, including attempts to circumvent self-exclusion, avoid KYC checks, or use cryptocurrencies. By analysing top search results, filtering out licensed domains, and mapping affiliate pages that link through to illegal operators, the Commission compiled a dataset of more than 1,000 unique sites accessed by British consumers.
The scope of coverage has widened over time. In December 2024, new search terms linked to crypto casinos were added, a move that coincided with a sharp rise in the number of illegal sites detected. By July 2025, the dataset had grown to 535 unique domains, a steep increase compared with the 364 identified just a year earlier.
Engagement, not just access
The Commission is not simply counting websites. Using traffic estimates from Similarweb, Livesley and his team analysed both the number of visits to these sites and the average time spent per visit. To deal with uncertainty in third-party estimates, they applied bootstrapping techniques to generate confidence intervals around the results. Average visit duration has remained broadly stable, at around six to seven minutes, but the number of visits has fluctuated considerably over the 15-month period.
Estimated visits rose between August and December 2024, before declining sharply in February 2025 and flattening over the summer. By July 2025, the point estimate of visits, around 20 million, was broadly in line with levels seen a year earlier. This volatility suggests that spikes may be linked to particular promotions or major sporting events rather than to a structural upward trend.
To reflect both volume and duration, the Commission combined these measures into a single ‘engagement metric,’ adjusted for hidden traffic likely to be missed because of Virtual Private Network (VPN) use. Based on consumer surveys, around a quarter of users who admit to visiting illegal sites say they do so via a VPN, with a 95 per cent confidence interval suggesting the real figure could be anywhere between 19 and 34 per cent. Adjusting for this, the data indicates that total time spent on illegal websites peaked at 306 million minutes in January 2025, before falling back to 152 million minutes in July, almost exactly where it had been in July 2024.
Why the numbers matter
The Commission’s findings carry important implications for the licensed industry. On the one hand, the absence of sustained growth in consumer engagement with illegal sites should temper some of the more alarmist claims that the black market is spiralling out of control. On the other, the dynamic nature of the market underscores the ongoing risks to both consumers and legitimate businesses.
Illegal operators continue to innovate. Crypto casinos are increasingly embedded within sites that also offer traditional products such as slots and sports betting, blurring the lines between old and new models of unlicensed gambling. Messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram are also being used to promote or even host gambling opportunities, though these remain outside the scope of the Commission’s current web-based methodology. For consumers, the danger lies in the fact that many illegal sites are designed to look indistinguishable from licensed operators.
For the regulator, automation is beginning to change the game. By freeing up resources, the Commission is able to take swifter action against the highest-traffic sites and prioritise disruption efforts where they are likely to have the greatest impact. Future reports will explain in more detail how this disruption activity works in practice, and how the Commission is measuring its effectiveness.
Next steps and industry collaboration
Livesley is clear that the work is still in development. The methodology relies on assumptions, and the Commission is keen to improve its accuracy. This will involve refining search terms as consumer motivations evolve, broadening data collection to capture activity within apps and social platforms, and experimenting with alternative traffic-estimation providers. Crucially, the Commission is inviting licensed operators to collaborate, comparing their first-party web analytics with estimates from platforms such as Similarweb to calibrate the model more precisely.
VPN behaviour is another area of focus. The Commission plans to embed VPN-use questions into the Gambling Survey for Great Britain, explore open banking data for changes in VPN subscription payments, and monitor download trends from app stores. Together, these steps will help to refine the uplift applied to engagement metrics and build a clearer picture of the true scale of activity.
Looking ahead, the next two publications in the series will broaden the conversation. One will detail the enforcement interventions being undertaken to disrupt illegal gambling, while the other will tackle the more complex challenge of estimating the financial size of the market.
A market in flux
The picture painted by the Commission is not one of runaway growth, but of constant churn. Illegal websites appear and disappear at pace, fuelled by affiliates, new technologies, and shifting consumer behaviours. Average engagement has fluctuated but not escalated, yet the risks remain acute: consumers are exposed to unsafe products, the state loses tax revenues, and legitimate operators are undercut.
For businesses operating in the licensed sector, the lesson is clear. The illegal market is unlikely to vanish, but the regulator’s ability to detect and disrupt it is improving rapidly. Engagement with the Commission’s data-driven approach, whether by sharing insights, refining affiliate oversight, or tightening brand protection, will be central to ensuring that legal, regulated operators remain the most attractive and trusted option for consumers in Great Britain.
The post Illegal online gambling trends flat – but moving target for UKGC appeared first on G3 Newswire.
The UK Gambling Commission has published the second instalment in its ongoing series of reports on the illegal online gambling market in Great Britain. Introduced by Tim Livesley, Head of the Data Innovation Hub, the study sets out both the Commission’s developing methodology and its initial findings from a 15-month data collection exercise. The conclusion…
The post Illegal online gambling trends flat – but moving target for UKGC appeared first on G3 Newswire.