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UPDATE 9:45am - Comment received from the Gambling Commission.
Global gambling giant Entain is calling on the UK government and its international colleagues to adopt a range of enforcement measures to fight the black market.
Entain claims that the UK government is set to lose out on £335m across the next five years if it does not do more to restrict what the operator claims is a growing black market.
In a report released on Tuesday (September 24), Entain goes on to suggest a range of enforcement interventions that governments worldwide should use to make it harder for unlicensed operators to infiltrate their regulated markets.
The research, compiled by Regulus Partners and funded by Entain, points to separate research commissioned by the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC), which claims that the UK supports a £2.7bn black market.
The Regulus report says that gamblers seek the UK black market because of “price frictions in bonuses, free bets and other financial limits; to avoid financial scrutiny caused by ‘affordability’ checks; because more products can be available online (soon to be a bigger gap due to £5 slot limits); and to avoid self-exclusion”.
To fight back, the government should introduce a range of measures, including blocking payments to offshore operators by engaging with payment services providers, said Entain.
Restrictions should also be placed on mainstream and social media advertising, IP addresses should be blocked, criminal enforcement should be intensified and a public blacklist should be created to show consumers the names of offending websites, the operator said.
Entain also called on the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) to pass new secondary legislation that classifies unlicensed gambling as “priority illegal content”.
That would force search engines and social media sites to proactively restrict access to black market gambling operators, under the terms of the Online Safety Act, which passed into law in 2023 and is due to come into effect in the second half of 2025.
Questioned on this and on the report in general, a spokesperson for the DCMS told Vixio that "we recognise the impact harmful gambling can have on individuals and their families and we are absolutely committed to strengthening protections for those at risk".
The new Labour government has broadly committed to executing the remaining portions of the white paper, which laid out a project of gambling regulatory reform in the UK. However, it may seek to change some details of the document compiled by the previous Conservative government and has the leeway to introduce additional measures.
Entain’s report was officially unveiled at the SBC Lisbon conference, which began on Tuesday.
“Taking on the black market operators should be a key priority for policymakers around the world. It will tackle crime and raise money which could be spent on critical areas such as healthcare, education, and infrastructure. It would ensure that customers get greater protection from playing with fully regulated and legitimate operators,” said Barry Gibson, Entain chairman.
“This is a pivotal moment; if we go down the route of further tax increases rather than tackle the black market, it will drive even more customers towards unscrupulous operators and damage responsible, regulated businesses,” he said.
A spokesperson for the UK Gambling Commission told Vixio: "As with all gambling reports we will carefully consider its contents.
"As we stated last week, we are committed to tackling unlicensed gambling in Britain and have an extremely active specialist Black Markets Team.
"Since April, this Team has issued over 750 cease and desist, and disruption notices - this includes 259 cease-and-desists issued to operators and 189 to advertisers.
"Over that same period the Commission has referred over 78,000 URLs to Google with 50,000 of these removed by the search engine, and 221 website taken downs. This is a tenfold increase in URL takedowns in comparison to the whole of 2023-2024."
