Report
Illegal gambling - Phase 4: Initial findings from new data on consumer engagement with illegal gambling websites
The initial findings from new data on consumer engagement with illegal gambling websites.
Data collection
The Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB) is conducted via a push-to-web methodology, with data collected from adults aged 18 years and over living in Great Britain. Fieldwork is carried out in 4 waves running quarterly, with a combined annual sample of around 20,000 respondents. The new illegal gambling questions were first piloted in Wave 2 of the 2025 survey and have been included in all subsequent waves.
This report presents initial GSGB findings based on data collected across 4 waves between April 2025 and April 2026. Questions were asked only of respondents who gambled online in the past 12 months and were considered appropriate for inclusion on the online version of the survey. When excluding those who only gambled on National Lottery products, the remaining sample for those who gambled online in the past 12 months was 3,569. To estimate the proportion of people using illegal gambling websites among the whole population (including those who do not gamble), the data had also been rebased on all 14,257 respondents7 who completed the GSGB online survey.
References
7 Questions were asked online only, resulting in a sample size of approximately 14,000 respondents. Although the GSGB can be completed online or on paper, respondents who completed the paper questionnaire were excluded from the base for this analysis because the questions were not asked in the paper survey and online participants can differ in their characteristics from paper respondents. To improve representativeness, web weighting was applied to the online sample, adjusting the results to reflect the wider population.
Statements and survey question Next section
The Illegal Gambling Index
Last updated: 5 November 2026
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