In a space reminiscent of an IT classroom in a middling secondary school, Gambling Commission (GC) executive director Tim Miller steps away from the ICE exhibition floor for 40 minutes with EGR on the outer extremities of Fira Gran Via. He is fresh from a headline-grabbing speech at the start of the week in which he called out Facebook parent Meta for failing to stop illegal gambling ads on its platforms. In an offence-first approach from the regulator, which is setting its sights firmly on the black market, a £26m boost from the government in the Autumn Budget will be deployed to tackle the sector, while the litany of white paper implementations must still be ticked off.
The fight is a tough one. Data from 2024 commissioned by the Betting and Gaming Council (BCG) has claimed £2.7bn is staked with online black-market operators. Then there are non-GAMSTOP affiliates using parasite SEO populate Google’s search results. Crypto and social media are driving young people to offshore sites, too. Miller says continued collaboration, as the relationship between industry and regulator has become less febrile, is key to winning.
EGR: Tim, is the fight against the black market in the UK a winnable battle?
Tim Miller (TM): I think it absolutely is. We are not seeking, nor do we think it’s possible, to completely eliminate the black market. There’s probably no sector that has zero kind of illegal market. What we’re looking to do is continue taking steps to make it very difficult to provide illegal products at scale to British consumers.
If someone’s really determined, they are always going to be able to find some random website in some part of the world that doesn’t have the sort of standards we do, and gamble on it. If we can remove some of those big players and make sure other big companies that are helping to facilitate the illegal market [stop], then that will make a big difference.
The other thing we are going to be increasingly looking at is not just the supply side, but the demand side as well. What drives consumers there? What encourages them to go there? If all of us can be more focused on understanding that, then we can hit it from both ends. We know some people go there because they’re seeking to circumvent a self-exclusion they signed up for. And, for me personally, that’s the one I feel most strongly about addressing. We know from working with people with lived experience [of gambling harm], it’s really hard to make the decision to sign up and self-exclude, and once you’ve done it, you don’t want to be able to circumvent it. And those, frankly insidious ‘Not on GAMSTOP’ sites are not companies that are just indifferent to whether they harm consumers, ther are companies that have thought ‘there’s a group of vulnerable consumers there we can make money from, and we don’t care if we hurt them’, and they’re targeting them, and that’s something I really want us to be focused on.
EGR: What does success look like on a quantitative scale?
TM: From a of quantitative perspective, it’s always going to be tricky because the illegal market by its very nature doesn’t want to be measured. It’s not about relying on one single figure. Lots of people would like us to be able to say exactly how big the illegal market is. We will keep working towards that goal but I’m not sure it’ll ever be totally possible. What we’ll be measuring are a whole range of factors such as web traffic and the number of sites that get taken down.
My hope, over time, is there’s fewer search results being removed because they’re not there in first place. So, if we can see, for example, that ‘Not on GAMSTOP’ ads have disappeared from Facebook and places like that, that is a clear measure of success.
EGR: Is the £26m from the government over the next three years enough to truly move the needle?
TM: We were really pleased with that announcement for two reasons. One is, and let’s be honest about it, the Treasury doesn’t throw money around. The majority of our funding comes from licence fees. The fact the government was prepared to give us public money to fund this work is a recognition of how important it is, but also as a recognition of how successful we have been so far. The government’s not going to throw good money after bad if they thought we were not really on this and not going to be able to deliver value for money.
In the grand scheme of things, it is not an enormous amount of money when you consider some of the risks that come from the illegal market. I don’t think it should be seen as a kind of a silver bullet. We can’t simply regulate our way out of some of these risks. But the investment will allow us to do the existing stuff we’re already doing at greater scale. It may well allow us to invest in new technologies. It will certainly allow us to bring in new and additional skills we might need. So, it is a very welcome investment.
EGR: You targeted Meta in your speech at ICE for “turning a blind eye” to illegal advertising. Can you expand on that?
TM: We have sought for a long time to work well with social media companies and tech companies. With Google, for example, we’ve been able to build a very strong relationship with them. They respond incredibly well to taking action. I’m sure there’s more they can do, but there’s more we can all do. The reason why I particularly wanted to talk about Meta was that while we’ve had conversations with them, and they’ve been open to having those conversations, when you can go on to Meta’s ad library and search the keywords ‘Not on GAMSTOP’, you can see the ads there for yourself. It does make you question why are they taking a reactive approach to it?
Why is it that actually, as the regulator, we should have to use licence fee money, or indeed some of the new investment from government, to tell Meta about the very things that are visible in their own ad library? It’s why I framed it as a window on criminality, because it’s a very clear way to see these illegal ads in real time.
Now, to be fair, Meta has since reached out to us and we’ll be having conversation and meeting about it, but I do hope my speech will encourage them to take their own obligations seriously on this. If we can work well with a business like Meta, then it’ll be an incredibly powerful combination. We’re a really effective regulator, but we’ve got nothing like the resources and the impact an entity as big as Meta can have. If they do partner with us, wouldn’t that be amazing?
EGR: Is it ambivalence or a lack of recognition on Meta’s behalf?
TM: Meta would have to answer that. My view is they’re just not taking it seriously enough. They’ve got an opportunity to demonstrate to us as the regulator and to the British public that’s not the case by working collaboratively with us.
EGR: On Google, why are we still seeing ‘Not on GAMSTOP’ affiliates in search engine results?
TM: There is certainly more that Google and others can do. Google so far has been very responsive. We’re sending them huge numbers of URLs that have been identified and they are being removed. I welcome that, but I also welcome any opportunity Google can take to build on it. Search results and ads are only one part of the picture and, in many respects, it’s slightly downstream. The other big message from my speech was to the licensed industry. It’s working with lots of different kinds of suppliers, affiliates and companies that provide a whole range of different services. But as regulators, we are increasingly identifying that many of those companies are also supplying the illegal market. It’s quite difficult for us, as a regulator based in Birmingham, to drag a cloud hosting company in California to court.
The licensed industry is paying huge amounts of money to that business. If it were to withdraw its business from companies supplying the black market, that would have a massive effect. We want to align this regulatory firepower with the commercial muscle this massive international industry has got.
EGR: Any thoughts on the BGC calling it a “drop in the ocean”?
TM: If you compare it to what is the likely size of the illegal market? Then yes, absolutely. Giving money to the regulator by itself is not going to eliminate the illegal market, but if the BGC and its members continue to work really collaboratively with us – and there’s still a continued focus on high standards in the licensed industry – then that £26m, alongside what we’re already doing and what the industry could do with its commercial weight, then that would be a really powerful set of weapons.
EGR: Do you expect to take further action against licensed suppliers that continue to service and support black market operators?
TM: There is stuff ongoing in that space. To have a licence here should be seen as a real badge of honour and should be treated seriously. If you’re a B2B company, or indeed anybody else is licensed by us in Britain, you need to understand there are standards that are expected of you.
If you are knowingly supporting the illegal market, then that does raise questions about whether you are the sort of company or individual that’s suitable to have a licence in a market like ours. There are other jurisdictions across the world that do not care about standards in the same way we do. But in Britain, we care about the standards in our gambling industry and those that hold a licence must too.
EGR: Does to scope extend to a licensed B2B supplier offering services to black market operators in other jurisdictions? Does the GC have to consider this?
TM: As international regulators, we are regularly talking to each other and sharing intelligence. I’ve said before, I don’t want us to become the gambling world police. That doesn’t mean we don’t have an interest but, from a practical perspective, if we want to make sure British consumers are properly protected, we cannot be using our resources on investigating things that are going on in other countries. Those regulators, those governments, need to do that.
If one of our operators is found to be operating illegally in another country then yes, we want to know about it, and we will consider whether that impacts their suitability. We can’t be the ones to make that determination. Frankly, I wouldn’t want a regulator in North America deciding whether the UK Gambling Act has been broken or not, that’s our job.
EGR: Do the incoming tax rises and further lobbying on advertising from reformists and MPs mean the potential for further black market growth has now increased?
TM: All of us have to monitor that closely. It’s not just around questions of tax or advertising. With any regulatory change, as a regulator, we are constantly alive to the unintended consequences which might come from that. We absolutely have to be alive and respond if that risk becomes a reality.
What I don’t accept is that the risk of the black market has to be a reason why we should accept lower standards in the UK. I think you can make the two absolutely compatible, and one example of that would be financial risk assessments. That’s been a long-running piece of work and the pilot finished last year. We’ve been evaluating [the results], but we’ve deliberately taken our time because we want to make sure the assessments do get implemented, we do it in the right way.
EGR: A voluntary ombudsman was included in the 2023 white paper, but this won’t come to pass. Why is the industry having to go the statutory route?
TM: The work around the ombudsman was part of the white paper being led by the DCMS. If you look back at our advice to government on the white paper, we were clear that there’s real value in an ombudsman. But we also suggested that for an ombudsman to be as effective as possible then actually a statutory route is probably the ideal.
We recognised there was a pragmatic view for the potential to get that up and running much quicker [voluntarily] and consumers benefiting from it sooner. But some of the proposals that came from industry just weren’t sufficient to deliver what consumers should expect from an ombudsman. It’s down to the government to consider where it wants to go next, but we are still of the view an ombudsman would be an incredibly valuable thing.
EGR: Do you expect to see continued enforcement action against licensed operators, despite the progress made by the industry?
TM: I don’t think we’re in a world where there’s no need for the Gambling Commission to exist tomorrow. We are incredibly busy. We have a huge amount of work. The complexity of it is increasing because it’s a more complex world. But let’s give credit where it’s due. We are seeing fewer of those really big, egregious errors. They still bubble up occasionally and we started to see some of the risk dripping down through the industry. The days of regular penalties in excess of £10m certainly haven’t happened for some time, and I hope they are behind us, but there may still be the occasional one. The industry still has work to do to be compliant with everything we want and to meet the standards in a jurisdiction like Britain. But in the time I’ve been at the Commission, I’ve absolutely seen there has been a positive journey among large parts of the industry.
EGR: When we spoke a couple of years ago, there was a furore around affordability checks. Why do you think the discourse has settled somewhat on that front?
TM: There are probably two things that have happened there. One, we decided to do a pilot and have taken a reasonably cautious approach. We’ve taken it step by step and have provided reassurance to people that we weren’t just going to chuck a new thing in into the requirements
I think the second reason there’s less noise now is that as we launched the pilot, as more information was put out there, some of the myths around the checks started to be dealt with and people began to understand more about what it was all about. The emerging results from the pilot have shown we can remove a significant amount of friction from the process.
Whatever the outcome in terms of bringing in financial risk checks, establishing pilots as an approach to regulatory reform is something that should stay.
EGR: Finally, how do prediction markets fit under the GC’s scope?
TM: This is something I’ve been asked about on almost every platform. If we had a prediction markets swear jar, then we might actually have all the money we need to eliminate the black market. On a more serious note, I don’t think Britain will have the same kind of issues, challenges and debate the US has.
In Britain, I don’t think there is any doubt that the prediction markets you see in North America is something that would need to be licensed by us. There have been arguments in the US about whether it’s regulated gambling or not. I don’t think that that argument comes to pass in Britain.
The key thing for us, as with any new or developing product, is just ensuring we and the those providing the product are alive to the potential risks that come from it. While I don’t expect the sort of noise there’s been in North America, anything new that does come into the British market, whether it’s a new operator or a slightly different product, we will be watching closely to make sure it is compliant with our rules.
The post Gambling Commission’s Tim Miller on engaging with Meta and cracking down on “insidious” not-on-GAMSTOP affiliates first appeared on EGR Intel.
Executive director tells EGR the licensed industry must apply its weight to suppliers that support black market counterparts and how the additional £26m budget will be used
The post Gambling Commission’s Tim Miller on engaging with Meta and cracking down on “insidious” not-on-GAMSTOP affiliates first appeared on EGR Intel.