A striking disparity in problem gambling rates sits at the heart of new UK Gambling Commission research into the country’s illegal betting market.
Of 179 individuals whose transactions with suspected unlicensed operators were identified, 146 had assessable Problem Gambling Severity Index scores.
Fully 45% of those scored eight or higher on the PGSI, a threshold that indicates problem gambling, compared to just 6% among consumers using licensed operators in the same dataset.
The regulator was careful to note the data is not nationally representative and cannot provide a definitive picture of the scale or shape of illegal gambling in Britain.
Yet the findings carry significant weight in an ongoing industry debate, particularly around whether unlicensed operators are drawing customers away from regulated businesses.
On that front, the Commission’s research delivers a result that many in the licensed sector may find counterintuitive, with 91% of those making repeated transactions with illegal sites also active with licensed operators.
Researchers found no substantial decline in licensed gambling activity after those consumers first began transacting with unlicensed companies, undermining the argument that illegal operators function as a straightforward replacement.
The study used the regulator’s Open Banking dataset to trace 3,426 transactions linked to suspected illegal operators across the 179 identified individuals.
Analysts also observed that payments to illegal sites tended to arrive in clusters, with several transactions often concentrated within short windows of time rather than spread evenly.
One issue that surfaced in the data was the continued presence of credit card payments on illegal platforms, despite a UK-wide prohibition on using credit to fund gambling.
Credit card usage was limited, accounting for 138 transactions, or roughly 4% of the total identified, but the presence of any such payments highlights enforcement gaps that regulators will need to address.
The Commission framed the methodology itself as a significant step forward, with the report described as the latest in a running series examining the illegal market through financial behaviour data.
“This research represents a powerful proof of concept for the use of financial transaction data to better understand illegal gambling in Great Britain and elsewhere,” the regulator concluded.
The Open Banking approach offers authorities a more granular view of consumer behaviour than traditional survey methods, and the Commission indicated the technique could be applied more broadly going forward.
