Report

Illegal online gambling - Phase 3: Understanding push factors for consumer engagement with illegal gambling websites

The Gambling Commission's research into consumer engagement with the illegal online gambling market.

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Published
20 October 2026

Last updated
20 October 2026 - Changes

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Contents

• Illegal online gambling - Phase 3: Understanding push factors for consumer engagement with illegal gambling websites

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• Executive summary
• Introduction
• How to read this report
• Methodology
• • Digital intelligence
  • Quantitative phase
  • Qualitative phase
  • Strengths of the approach
  • Limitations of the approach
  • Ethics and governance
• Findings
• • Exploring the persona audiences
  • Attitudes towards gambling companies and regulation
  • Influences shaping illegal gambling website usage
  • Exploring attitudes towards push factors and influences in more depth
• Conclusions and next steps
• Appendices
• • Appendix A – Qualitative pre-task
  • Appendix B - Focus group discussion guide
  • Appendix C - Qualitative sample breakdown of 15 participants
  • Appendix D - Digital intelligence list of platforms evidence was sourced from
  • Appendix E – Quantitative survey
  • Appendix F – Quantitative sample

Quantitative phase

Following the digital intelligence phase, Yonder conducted a large-scale online quantitative survey with 4,007 individuals who had gambled online in the past 4 weeks, with fieldwork occurring between 1 and 15 May 2026. The sample was weighted to be representative across age, gender and region, as per the most recently available Gambling Survery for Great Britain (GSGB) data on those that had gambled in the past 4 weeks (excluding National Lottery only players).

The survey was designed to identify consumer engagement with illegal gambling websites, develop a robust statistical methodology for future measurement of the persona audiences identified in earlier phases, and establish which push factors have most influence on engagement with illegal gambling websites. It was built around 3 pillars:

1. Illegal Incidence Index. The index scores individuals who gamble online from 0 to 100 based on self-reported indicators of illegal website usage. This phase accounts for those changes and re-establishes the threshold of 18.75, the point at which we can be confident someone has used an illegal website.
2. Sizing the persona audiences. Using a combination of rules-based segmentation and factor analysis, the survey provides a method through which to estimate the illegal gambling website user composition, and a method for tracking how that composition shifts over time.
3. Assessing push factors. Statistical key drivers analysis was used to assess how different push factors have different levels of importance in driving suspected illegal gambling website usage. These factors were designed with input from the Commission and from the digital intelligence phase.

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Qualitative phase

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Last updated: 20 October 2026

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