Review of unlicensed online gambling in the UK’ report was published by the Betting and Gaming Council on 4 February. This was three weeks after the Chief Executive of the Gambling Commission had written to Carolyn Harris commenting: “We know that licensed operators and their trade bodies are concerned about the impact of the illegal market, but our own evidence suggests that the impact may be being exaggerated”.
That comment surely needs to be reconsidered in the context of survey findings in the PwC report that found the proportion of UK online gamblers using an unlicensed operator has more than doubled from 2.2% to 4.5% in the last 1-2 years, equating to an increase from about 210,000 players in 2018-19 to about 460,000 in 2020. It also found that the share of online stakes with unlicensed operators had almost doubled from 1.2% in 2018/19 to 2.3%, corresponding to a doubling of stakes with unlicensed online operators from £1.4 billion to £2.8 billion.