The UK gambling Commission (UKGC) is conducting its first thorough analysis of the UK black market to aid in its supervision of unlawful internet gaming activities. The first iteration of the research will be out in late spring 2025.
“With a better understanding of why and how consumers access unlicensed gambling websites, we can identify ways in which we can use data to identify unlicensed websites and estimate their usage by GB consumers,” the Gambling Commission wrote in a note outlining the study’s methodology and goals.
It expects the study to assist strengthen and grow its online surveillance of the black market, as well as serve as a starting point for the Gambling Commission to grasp its scope.
The UKGC, like other regulators across Europe, is integrating web traffic statistics and gaming activity data to determine the gross gambling yield (GGY) of the unregulated online sector.
UKGC assesses players’ average spend across unlawful sites.
To calculate GGY, it combines online traffic statistics from unauthorized sites with the average player spend amount. This was computed by gathering player spending data from 139,152 online gambling accounts from seven of the UK’s biggest providers.
The data was obtained between July 2018 and June 2019, and the regulator estimates the average GGY per minute for online slots to be £0.32, based on the premise that slots account for a considerable amount of unlawful gaming activity. However, it warns that the existing methodology fails to account for high-spending consumers in other gambling activities such as sports betting.
To acquire search traffic statistics, the regulator is tracking certain search words via Google Trends and Similarweb’s key word generator. This manner, it can determine the most popular search phrases based on traffic.
The top five pages of Google results for each search query are gathered, and connected websites and articles are identified. Unlicensed betting sites are separated from these affiliates and examined to determine whether they are available to UK customers. Web traffic and average visit duration metrics for each unauthorized site are then compiled.
The main regulators in the Netherlands and Sweden invest much on their own research.
Recently, the Netherlands gambling regulator KSA and Sweden’s Spelinspektionen warned that their own channelisation data might be affected by how much a customer spends on the black market, since both reported that players spent more on the illicit market than on licensed sites.
The UKGC’s approach reflects this tendency. It clarified: “There is anecdotal evidence from our Consumer Voice research into unlicensed gambling that people’s spending habits are different on unlicensed sites compared to licensed sites.”
It further stated that the approach it devised did not account for time spent on unregistered sites where no money is paid. An updated GGY estimate is also being developed, utilizing more recent data.
Future editions will address the role of social media and streaming platforms.
The Gambling Commission stated that in the future, it will investigate other avenues connecting players to the black market, including as social media and encrypted messaging applications like WhatsApp and Telegram. It also mentioned streaming networks such as Twitch and Kick and their role in driving visitors to unauthorized websites.
Licensed operators are being urged to disclose any relevant data that would help the Gambling Commission improve its approach or offer other techniques of detection.
“Tackling the unlicensed market is a shared goal, and we encourage any feedback for ways we can improve our methodology,” the agency noted.
A separate report conducted by the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) was issued in September, with projections that the UK’s internet black market could generate £2.7 billion in bets annually.
According to BGC CEO Grainne Hurst, the study results were surprising and revealed “the unnerving true scale of the growing, unsafe, unregulated gambling black market”.
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