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  3. Illegal online gambling: Challenges of estimating the size of the illegal gambling market

Report

Illegal online gambling: Challenges of estimating the size of the illegal gambling market

The final chapter of the Gambling Commission's research into the illegal online market, focusing on challenges estimating the size of the market.

Published
6 November 2025

Last updated
6 November 2025 - Changes

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  1. Contents
  2. Executive summary

Executive summary

Estimating the scale of the market is a worthwhile goal – it helps us understand if our work to disrupt this market is achieving success by making it difficult for illegal gambling to be offered at scale to consumers in Great Britain. It also demonstrates the need for wider action, from a range of stakeholders in order to achieve a sustainable reduction in this risk to consumers in Great Britain.

Different methodologies can be used to estimate the scale of this market – each have benefits and limitations. This report explores these different approaches and outlines opportunities to develop them further.

We have focused on methodologies based on objective data. This provides the opportunity to clearly explain levels of uncertainty associated with estimates and creates options to access new data to refine assumptions and improve them.

We note concern over reliability of estimates based on surveys which require consumers to recall previous illegal gambling expenditure with any accuracy.

Having examined different methodologies, we are not yet in a position to make a robust and reliable estimate of the size of this market.

We have identified actions to be taken to address these limitations – creating a pathway towards developing an estimate of the size of this market which is fit for public use.

We urge caution over any estimates presented by third parties or commentators which don’t have a transparent methodology, or which do not show how the challenges in this report have been considered, or that provide precise ‘point estimates’ without clarity of the associated margins for error and caveats.

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Introduction and context - Challenges of estimating the size of the illegal gambling market
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