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Report

Illegal gambling - Findings from an open banking data analysis

An analysis of directly observed illegal gambling transactions in anonymised banking transaction data linked to individuals’ survey responses.

Published
28 October 2026

Last updated
28 October 2026 - Changes

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  1. Contents
  2. Introduction

Introduction

Keeping crime out of gambling is one of the statutory objectives of the Gambling Commission and tackling the illegal market is a key workstream contributing to this. As part of our strategic objective to use data and analytics to make gambling regulation more effective, we have been conducting research to learn more about the illegal market using a range of data sources including surveys, estimated web traffic data and here with financial transaction data.

This report sets out how we have used anonymised banking transaction data to start to help us further understand the characteristics of some of the people who use the illegal market and the harm that they may be suffering, as well as the financial context of how payments from individuals to illegal operators are made.

Key findings include examples of individuals engaging simultaneously with the licensed and illegal market, a higher proportion of people scoring 8 or more on the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI) among people who we know use the illegal market and low rates of credit card use for the transactions that we have detected with illegal operators.

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Illegal gambling - Findings from an open banking data analysis - Results
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