UKGC Payment Data: 91% of Repeat Illegal-Site Users Still Bet Licensed
The Gambling Commission published its first open banking study of the illegal market on 28 October. The numbers don't fit the simplest version of the black market argument. Of the people with repeated detected payments to unlicensed operators, 91% also gambled with licensed sites. After that first illegal payment, their regulated spending didn't fall in any meaningful way. Illegal play looks like something added on top of licensed activity, not a swap.
The harm finding is blunter. Problem gambling scores among people paying unlicensed operators sit well above those recorded for customers of licensed sites. Correlation, mind. The Commission says so itself. The study can't prove illegal sites cause the harm, and it can't size the black market either.
Some limits in the method are worth spelling out. A payment firm's categoriser sorted the transactions, and anything with a gambling probability above 50% counted as gambling. Only accounts that support open banking made the cut, so cryptocurrency payments sit outside the sample. The approach also picks up payments to just some illegal operators. Narrow base, then. The regulator admits as much.
How players get there matters too. Phase 3 Consumer Voice research, out on 20 October 2026, named searches for sites "not on GamStop" as a main route into the illegal market. The phrase has turned into shorthand for fewer checks, faster withdrawals and other payment options. That survey covered 4,007 people who had gambled online in the previous four weeks, with fieldwork between 1 and 15 May 2026. The panel isn't nationally representative, the Commission notes, so it can't give a definitive picture of the illegal market.
Timing dropped the report into Budget week. Online gaming duty has been 40% since April 2026, and the sector is still absorbing earlier increases. The Betting and Gaming Council has tied those costs straight to the black market, arguing that higher taxes on regulated operators make unlicensed sites more attractive. That market pays no UK tax and offers no licensed safeguards. Citing projections, the BGC warned that a 25% rate could put almost 9,000 jobs at risk and leave almost 1,000 betting shops and casinos closed or at serious risk of closure. H2 Gambling Capital forecasts the harmful illegal market will keep growing as higher betting taxes make Britain's regulated market less competitive, with more than one in five pounds staked online heading to illegal operators by 2031.
Does the new data settle that fight? No. Operators can point to the concentration of harm among illegal-site users as proof of what's at stake. Campaigners can point to the 91% as proof that players aren't simply leaving. Neither side gets a clean win out of the report.
One caveat for anyone quoting that 91%. It describes people with repeated detected payments, not every player who has ever touched an unlicensed site. The sample is open-banking accounts only. Read the condition before the headline.
The next test lands in April 2027, when general betting duty is scheduled to move to a higher rate. Until then, operators have the Commission's read on the evidence, the BGC's job and shop closure projections, and a payment dataset showing illegal play stacking on top of licensed play. How each side uses that in the duty debate is the live question now.