Britons Staking Billions Illegally
New research has found that Britons staked more than £2.5 billion on illegal, unregulated gambling black market sites online last year. The shocking discoveries by a study run by the BGC have sent ripples across the community.
Illegal black market gambling is far bigger than expected in the UK. © Fathromi Ramdlon, Pixabay
Britons Have Been Staking Billions on Illegal Black Market Gambling
Newly published research has uncovered the “shocking” extent British people are gambling illegally on the black market.
A study that was commissioned by the country’s standards body the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) revealed Britons are illegally staking over £4 billion a year on black market bets.
It found 1.5 million people in the country use illegal black market betting sites, which lack regulation and may allow credit card deposits, which are against the law in the UK.
Data collected by consultants Frontier Economics showed over £1.5 billion a year might be being gambled in-person as well as the online bets.
Over the course of a five-year Parliament term, it is estimated this could cost the Treasury in the region of £335 million in taxes, which the report said could fund over a million GP consultations.
A fifth of people aged 18-24 who gamble were found to use illegal black market betting sites.
Shocking and Unnerving
According to the BGC’s chief executive, the report is “shocking” and “exposes the unnerving true scale of the growing, unsafe, unregulated gambling black market”.
“From online gaming, to betting on sports like horse racing, millions of customers are being driven into the arms of pernicious black market operators,” Grainne Hurst said in a statement released alongside the report. “These people don’t care about player safety, don’t want to pay their fair share to support sport and don’t pay a penny in tax.”
“By failing to adhere to the stringent standards set by the Gambling Commission, unregulated operators in the unsafe black market can make bigger offers, grant customers total anonymity, and promise the freedom to gamble without any controls or safety measures, unlike BGC members. Worst of all, these sites are making a mockery of the rules set up to protect the most vulnerable by aggressively advertising their services to those who have self-excluded.”
Hurst said the government and the country’s industry regulator, the Gambling Commission, need to wise up to the scale of the black market illegal gambling problem.
Warning Signs
Associate director at Frontier Economics Andrew Leicester, who is one of the report’s co-authors, noted the results of the research were not all bad news.
The study found the majority of gambling in the UK is carried out legally, but Leicester highlighted the “warning signs” contained in the report.
He added: “The landscape is evolving quickly in ways that suggest black market gambling is getting easier to find and access.”
The UK’s newly elected government, led by Labour prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, pledged ahead of the election to reform gambling regulations, but is yet to pass any laws on the matter.
