Illegal gambling: update on trends and data approach
Our Head of Data Innovation Hub Tim Livesley provides an update on trends and our data approach in relation to illegal gambling.
Posted 21 April 2026 by Tim Livesley
Last month, we were delighted to host a session on illegal gambling at our Spring Evidence Conference in Birmingham. We were pleased to be joined by representatives from industry, the Dutch gambling regulator and HMRC. As well as hearing different perspectives on illegal gambling and how to best to tackle it, the session also gave us a chance to provide an update on the trends data we published in November 2025.
Our last publication explained the methodology that we are using to obtain data on consumers access to illegal gambling websites. We have noted that we use web traffic estimates, which are subject to margins of error. We view them as more effective at providing insights on trends rather than absolute volumes of traffic. We also acknowledge that there are alternative ways consumers can access illegal gambling which will not be visible in this data. We caution against treating any single data source as definitive on an issue as multi-dimensional as illegal gambling. We are also developing our approach to additional data points which can be used in conjunction. Nonetheless, web traffic to illegal websites is a useful indicator of trends.
Figure 1 provides an overview of consumer engagement with illegal websites, measured by estimated total minutes of time on site. Our previous publication provided data to July 2025. Our trends line can now be updated to February 2026 – represented in the trend line to the right of the dotted line. A confidence interval is represented by the shaded area to reflect margins of error.
Figure 1: Trend line of estimated consumer engagement with illegal gambling websites
Figure 1 shows a continuation of fluctuating trends - but does not appear to fit with a seasonal pattern, with the growth in the autumn of 2024 not mirrored by a similar increase in the same period of 2025. The overall trendline does not appear to show a consistent or sustained growth in consumer engagement over the 21 months of data.
One of the notable external factors to have changed during this period is the introduction of the Online Safety Bill – which had the effect of many consumers obtaining Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to circumvent restrictions on online activity. We had already factored an uplift of 30 percent to our trendline to reflect traffic hidden by VPNs. Beyond July 2025, we recognise that a larger proportion of web traffic could be hidden.
To explore this further we obtained data on VPN usage from Ofcom1 and Similarweb2. The Ofcom data showed a sharp increase in usage in July 2025, followed by a steady decline to a level around 40 percent above previous levels. Similarweb data mirrored this, but with a less significant initial spike. Figure 2 provides an updated version of the trendline with our VPN usage assumptions adjusted in line with these two scenarios. The data for July is associated with a larger confidence interval – which settles back towards a more consistent position after this date.
Figure 2: Trend line of estimated consumer engagement with illegal gambling websites – including VPN scenarios adjustment
We continue to work on improvements to our methodology and are seeking input from other international regulators and licensed operators to help verify and improve existing data sources and to identify additional datasets which can be used to improve understanding of the illegal market. We are also collecting more data on consumer engagement through the Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB) and generating more insight through our Consumer Voice research programme. We will be publishing further updates on our research, statistics and data work throughout the year. The Commission continues to treat illegal gambling as a priority and we will also be providing further updates on how we are expanding our disruption and enforcement activity and how we are measuring the impact of this investment.
Footnotes
1 Ofcom online nation report 2025 (opens in new tab)
2 Similarweb estimates of monthly active users for 19 VPN apps, based on aggregated and anonymised app usage data across the Android and iOS app stores.