Report
Illegal online gambling - Phase 1: Exploring consumer pathways into using illegal gambling websites
The Gambling Commission's report on the first phase of the Consumer Voice illegal gambling project.
Introduction
This report presents the findings from a mixed methodology study conducted by Yonder Consulting in partnership with the Gambling Commission. The main objective of this developmental study was to enhance understanding of experiences of people who gamble and attitudes towards illegal gambling websites (Note: illegal gambling websites are websites held by gambling companies which offer their products to consumers in Great Britain without having obtained the necessary licence from the Gambling Commission to do so1).
More specifically, this research aimed to:
- identify pathways into illegal gambling websites, including triggers and search process
- understand individuals’ motivations for using illegal gambling websites
- explore individuals’ knowledge levels and gaps: are they aware of licensing and can they tell the difference between licensed and illegal gambling companies?
- consider what factors may drive people who gamble to using illegal websites in the future
- ultimately, understand the impact on play and perceptions of illegal gambling: for example, are consumers invested in controlling their engagement with the illegal gambling market?
One of the Gambling Commission’s 3 Gambling Act licensing objectives is to prevent gambling from being a source of crime or disorder, being associated with crime or disorder, or being used to support crime. This includes the prevalence of gambling companies operating without a licence from the Commission. Through its Evidence Gaps and Priorities Programme, the Commission has identified a need to improve its knowledge of the extent and impact of the illegal market in Great Britain.
A core component of this need involves understanding why and how some consumers choose to engage with the online illegal market, that is, gambling websites. As this becomes better understood, it can feed into the Commission’s wider work on sizing the prevalence of the online illegal market in Great Britain.
This study forms only the first phase of research into this topic; subsequent phases will ultimately inform the development of questions for the Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB), providing data to enable the Commission to track the prevalence of consumer engagement with the illegal market over time.
Alongside this research, the Commission is developing a data project to estimate the scale of the online illegal market. The model is used to identify illegal gambling websites and combine web traffic data with player behaviour data to estimate the amount of gross gambling yield generated from these websites. This model allows the Commission to track the direction of change in the online illegal market over time, and assess the direct impact of disruption, as well as any indirect effects that occur due to changes in policy on the licensed market.
References
1The ‘How to read this report’ section contains more detail of the terminology used.
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Methodology - Illegal online gambling: Phase 1
Last updated: 18 September 2025
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