BGC AGM 2026 - Tim Miller speech
26 February 2026
This speech was delivered by executive director Tim Miller at the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) Annual General Meeting on Thursday 26 February 2026.
Please note: This is the speech as drafted and may slightly differ from the delivered version.
Hello everyone, thank you for that welcome and thank you for accepting the late game substitution that has led me to be speaking with you all today.
The fact that I am here today, does point to the fact that we are all going through a time of change right now. And with that of course comes a measure of uncertainty. The budget, the Commission’s Fees, Gambling Act Review implementation and changing faces: it all adds up. So today I will reflect a little on this and how we at the Commission want to work through this period with you. I then want to turn my attention to the future, and how I see the relationship between regulator and industry continue to develop, with a particular focus on how our work on the illegal market might drive this.
If I’m going to discuss change, it's probably best I start with the Commission first. As everyone in this room knows, earlier this month, Andrew Rhodes announced he would leave his role as Chief Executive at the Gambling Commission. His last day with us is the 30 April and I want to echo the statement our Interim Chair, Charles Counsell made and put on record my own thank you to Andrew for his excellent leadership for the nearly five years he has been at the Commission. Speaking personally for a moment, he is an amazing boss to work for and frankly one of the best human beings I’ve met. I’m not the only one at the Commission who will miss him when he goes.
And I know there may be some concerns in industry about his departure too. Andrew and the Commission have strengthened our engagement with industry and in turn the relationship we have with you in these five years. But whilst Andrew will be leaving, myself, Sarah Gardner and the Commission more widely remain committed to the approach he instilled. I want everyone here today to understand our work continues: our commitment to making gambling safer, fairer and crime free continues and so does our aspiration to collaborate with everyone who shares those goals going forwards. We still want compliance at the earliest opportunity and we still think that we can achieve that quicker through working with you as far as possible.
In terms of the Commission’s next steps, our Board are already working on the process to appoint an Interim Chief Exec and we will keep people informed on this process.
More widely though, this is a wider time of change and challenge. We know that the Budget in November radically changed the outlook for many gambling businesses. Indeed, government themselves have identified some of the likely impacts, especially in relation to the illegal market. The extra £26 million over three years that the Treasury committed to the Commission is welcomed and it is a vote of confidence in our work in that area. But we also know that we don’t address the risk from the illegal market on our own. As I said at ICE last month, there is more that others outside the industry need to do as well – social media firms, big tech and affiliates need to make a concerted effort – not just industry and regulators. And that is why I’m delighted with the good start made by the Government’s Illegal Gambling Taskforce, which I sit on and chair one of its subgroups. It includes representatives from finance and the world of social media and I know getting those sectors to actively help suppress illegal gambling is something the Minister is equally committed to.
It’s early days but there are some positive signs. Since my speech at ICE, I have met with Meta and they have committed to working with the Commission further in this space, especially in relation to "not on gamstop" sites. I intend to hold them to that. Again, as things progress we will keep you informed but at the Commission we know time is of the essence and we will look to move forwards as quickly as we can.
Of course, tackling the illegal market is just one area of our work and the only part of our work that will be receiving taxpayer funding. Which is why DCMS has recently launched a consultation on our Fees. Again, we understand why there may be frustration by the timing of this. We are thankful to DCMS for getting this consultation published but understand that hot on the heels of the Budget and statutory levy it may be unwelcome.
What I would say though is that it has been five years since our fees were last reviewed. A lot has happened in that time. In particular the complexity of our work has increased considerably. Not just in our compliance and enforcement activity but also in our licensing work. The ever more complex corporate structures that have developed in this industry means that work to assess things like change of corporate control applications is not always covered by the application fees charged, leaving general licence fee income to subsidise it. And without the powers to set our own fees, something that many comparable regulators do have and which was recommended in the Gambling Act Review White Paper, we can’t control the way our fees are set so that they might be more predictable for industry.
That said, averaged out across the industry, the rise the Commission is asking for would mean that our total income - excluding National Lottery - as a proportion of total industry GGY, would increase from 0.21 per cent to 0.28 per cent. All so we can continue our core work at the same time as we expand our efforts on tackling illegal gambling. The DCMS’ consultation is running until the 29 March and I of course encourage you all to submit a response. We don’t take for granted what the outcome of the consultation will be so have already started the work to look at what we would need to scale back, slow down or stop if we don’t receive the increase to income that we consider is needed to maintain our current levels of regulatory activity.
This already takes account of the fact that we are hopefully approaching the end of the Commission’s role in implementing the Gambling Act Review. Alongside DCMS we will continue our efforts to evaluate the impact the White Paper measures have had. As I said in a speech last September, to understand whether the reforms being implemented are effective, whether they are delivering the outcomes that we all want to see, they need to be properly evaluated. To make the greatest progress in making gambling safe, fair and crime free we need to understand what actually works in practice. To repeat what I said last year at Peers for Gambling Reform, getting into a position where we are on an endless treadmill of reform will not take us any further forward in figuring out what works. And like a treadmill, we will risk expending a lot of energy just to go nowhere. That’s not an outcome the Commission wants. So we will complete our work to implement the Gambling Act Review. But we then think it’s important that there is some time for these changes to bed in. A period of some regulatory stability.
And I think that creates some opportunities. As I’ve already touched upon, it gives some space for us to ramp up our efforts in tackling the illegal market. Now much of what we do is likely to be focussed in the enforcement and prosecutorial spaces building upon the considerable numbers of sites and URLs that have been taken down or removed from search results. However, addressing the supply side of the equation will only get us so far. If we are to really have an impact then we will also need to look at the demand side - what encourages people to move to the illegal market and what can be done to keep them in the licensed market (other than those that have self-excluded)?
Britain has one of the most diverse, competitive and successful gambling markets in the world whilst being one of the most strongly regulated with high channelisation rates. When I talk to international regulators and governments they often speak enviously about what has been built in Britain, what you have built, since the 2005 Act. So as well as protecting consumers we need to protect the regulated market that has been created here. I am clear that if we are to win the fight against the criminals that seek to exploit British consumers then we need to consider how we retain that same diversity, competitiveness and success in our domestic gambling industry in the years to come.
And I think now is the time for that conversation. To be clear, that is not me accepting that recent regulatory changes have been one of the top drivers to the illegal market. Our research does not provide evidence for that conclusion. The regulatory reforms of the last ten or so years were necessary. The compliance failures in the industry back when I joined the Commission in 2016 were so widespread and so egregious that stronger regulation was both needed and was inevitable. However, in more recent times there has been a noticeable change in our casework. Don’t get me wrong - we still have high volumes of casework and the complexity is increasing but the days of multimillion pound financial penalties happening almost weekly do appear to be behind us.
That’s not a reason for operators to lose focus on compliance. But a more stable compliance picture does make it easier for us to have more sensible conversations about opportunities to enhance the offer to players and how regulator and government can play a part in supporting industry to do that. Conversations that 5 years ago would simply have been impossible to have. That’s one of the reasons why we have suggested that a fees uplift would allow us to do a strategic piece of work to review the impact, efficiency and burden of current regulatory requirements, consistent with the Government’s wider regulatory reform agenda.
There will be those that suggest that this signals the Commission moving towards weaker regulation and accepting greater risk for consumers. That is clearly nonsense and I would suggest that anyone who had their licence suspended over the last year or so wouldn’t feel that our approach to enforcement has been getting softer. Nevertheless, it has to be possible to take robust enforcement action for regulatory breaches and still make space to support and even encourage consumer focussed innovation.
And of course, innovation can not successfully happen without the licensing objectives being central to the design. During the White Paper process some industry proposals to strengthen the offer to punters were being made without the thinking about risk mitigation being done at the same time. A suggestion that liberalising measures should be enacted and any consumer risk sorted out afterwards. Such an approach is the fastest way of torpedoing what might otherwise be a sensible reform.
But even the White Paper gave us an example of where innovation need not be incompatible with the licensing objectives. Allowing physical sports books to open inside casinos was, on the face of it, a fairly simple and small change. And having visited Paddy’s Sports Book at the Hippodrome, you can instantly see the increased appeal to players without seeing any real change in the level of risk for them. I was really impressed by what I saw.
And I am sure there are other areas too where you may be thinking of innovating but weren’t sure how the Commission would react. So let me be clear, we want a competitive and innovative licensed market that keeps customers within a safe, fair and well regulated environment and out of the clutches of the scammers and criminals of the illegal market. The current statutory and public policy framework will place some limitations on what can be achieved but it does not need to be an automatic bar to a better consumer experience. So if you have ideas, come and talk to us about them - show us your commitment to the licensing objectives and we’ll show you our commitment to supporting innovation.
Indeed, some of those conversations have already started including one that I have recently kicked off with our Industry Forum.
In December 2025, the Government laid the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Cryptoassets) Regulations 2025 before Parliament. If approved, this will bring cryptoasset within the FCA’s regulatory remit. The new cryptoasset regime is expected to come into force on 25 October 2027.
Firms wishing to undertake any of the new cryptoasset regulated activities will need to be authorised by the FCA under FSMA with permission to undertake those activities at the point the new regime commences. These steps, progressing the FCA’s roadmap, does change the picture.
And that, as well as the growing appetite we see from punters, means we do now want to start looking at what the potential path forward would be to create a way for cryptoasset to be used as a consumer payment option for licensed and regulated gambling in Great Britain.
As a tentative first step I’ve asked our Industry Forum to look at how they think this could be progressed sensibly and in line with the licensing objectives. Now, I’m not going to set any deadlines or arbitrary timelines today. That wouldn’t help anyone. But at the Commission we know this is something where demand exists. Our illegal markets research also gives us evidence that crypto is one of the two biggest searches that lead British gamblers to illegal sites. There will be significant challenges and risks to overcome in considering this topic but I am keen that we approach this in the spirit of exploring the art of the possible rather than starting from a position of finding all the reasons not to innovate.
And as we slowly but surely get towards the time our own role in implementing the Gambling Act Review will come to an end, supporting innovation is something that we want to be able to point some of our resources towards. And again, given the changing picture and our expectation of growth in the illegal market, we think this is important in terms of helping keep consumers safe. Innovation should be and can be one of our central consumer protection tools when it comes to the illegal market.
And I think that is a good note to end on. We are all going through a period of change and with that comes uncertainty. But some things don’t change. At the Gambling Commission, we still want to work with you and others to make gambling safe, fair and crime free. We want to ensure compliance at the earliest opportunity and we want to do that by continuing to build a relationship based on collaboration as far as possible. And all of us here today, want to continue combatting the illegal market, through our new funding, through our world leading enforcement approach but also by supporting innovation to demonstrate to consumers the appeal of a vibrant, well regulated British gambling industry.
Thank you and I look forward to your questions.
Last updated: 26 February 2026
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