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A man was arrested in the UK on September 20 on suspicion of providing unlicensed gambling; however, details about the case remain scarce.
The Gambling Commission said that with the support of Staffordshire Police, a 39-year-old was arrested in Stoke-on-Trent.
“The man is alleged to have committed offenses under Section 33 and 330 of the Gambling Act 2005,” the Gambling Commission said in a press release.
A spokesperson for the Gambling Commission confirmed to Vixio GamblingCompliance that the regulator will not be providing any more details than those in its press release, at this stage.
This silence from the gambling regulator leaves a host of questions about the offence unanswered, including whether it relates to illegal online or land-based gambling, as well as if the consumers being targeted were UK-based.
News of the arrest comes just one day after UK trade group the Betting and Gaming Council published a survey it commissioned which estimates that £2.7bn is staked by people in the UK on illegal sites online annually and a further £1.6bn could be being staked in person at illegal gambling dens.
The study claims that bets on the gambling black market online and offline could deprive the Treasury of up to £335m throughout a five-year parliament if action is not taken.
In response to the survey, a Gambling Commission spokesman said it is “committed” to fighting unlicensed gambling and has an “extremely active specialist black markets team”.
Separately, in a blog post on September 19, Ben Haden, the Gambling Commission’s director of research and statistics, warned that the regulator will continue to “take action wherever we see misuse of our official statistics”.
Discussing the latest wave of participation data for the Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB) and providing an update on the next steps, Haden said he would report back to members of the gambling sector who have engaged with the regulator with their perspectives and encouraged others in the industry to provide their feedback too.
“I look forward to engaging with many of you over what the GSGB tells us in the future and on debating what we can do with the new information it gives us,” Haden wrote.
