UK sees 27m visits to black market sites in a year
21st December 2020
| By Richard Mulligan
British consumers visited unregulated gambling sites almost 30 million times in a year, according to research highlighted by the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC).
BGC said a report by PWC revealed that 200,000 customers used an unlicensed gambling operator over a 12-month period between 2018 and 2019, staking around £1.4bn.
Overall, unregulated operators accounted for 2.5 per cent of all visits to betting websites – amounting to 27 million visits in total. Nearly one in 10 (9%) of all gambling search results were for black market sites.
With the UK Government embarking on its long-anticipated Gambling Review, the BGC warned that tougher controls on licensed operators could lead to customers being forced into the arms of unscrupulous black market alternaives, who have none of the safeguards put in place by the regulated sector.