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Report

Illegal online gambling - Phase 2: Identifying indicators of consumer engagement with illegal gambling websites

The Gambling Commission's report on the second phase of the Consumer Voice illegal gambling project.

Published
18 September 2025

Last updated
18 September 2025 - Changes

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Contents

Introduction

This report contains the findings from the second phase of the Gambling Commission’s research into the online unlicensed gambling market, specifically illegal websites, conducted in collaboration with Yonder Consulting (Yonder) as part of the Consumer Voice Research Programme.

The research was designed to refine the approach and to validate findings from the first phase of the project, conducted earlier in 2024.

The first phase was exploratory in nature, combining a quantitative incidence check with some broad indicators of illegal website use and follow-up qualitative depth interviews with those who have used illegal websites. This study found 4 qualitative broad audience groups: self-excluders, skilled advocates, social explorers; accidental tourists; and, additionally, outside of the scope of the illegal market: non-users and/or non-engagers – by far, the largest group.

The second phase was designed to have a narrower focus, developing a suite of questions on the online illegal market for the Commission’s Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB), which would allow them to understand the level of engagement with the online illegal market in more detail going forward.

Objectives

The primary objective of this research project was to produce a set of indicators by which the Commission could track the consumer engagement with the online illegal market over time. This output objective was to develop a set of questions for the Commission’s GSGB. To accompany this output, Yonder provided a transparent explanation of the methodological approach used to select these questions and the composite scoring system designed to allow the Commission to monitor consumer engagement with illegal websites, which will be published in a forthcoming Phase 3 technical report.

A further research objective was to validate the routes into the online illegal market found in the first phase, and how these routes interact with, and feed into, the different types of audiences who use illegal gambling websites.

This report focuses on the indicators of illegal gambling as research findings, rather than their development for the GSGB, which is covered in an upcoming Phase 3 technical report.

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Methodology - Illegal online gambling: Phase 2
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