The Gambling Commission on Thursday 5 November published its first estimates of how many people in Great Britain use illegal, unlicensed gambling websites. The figures come from the fourth phase of its research into illegal online gambling and draw on Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB) responses collected between April 2025 and April 2026. The regulator also released an updated Illegal Gambling Data Dashboard alongside the report.
What the survey found
Across the whole adult population, including people who do not gamble, 94.4% showed no sign of using an illegal gambling website. A further 4.6% showed limited signs of engagement, but not enough to be counted as users. That leaves 0.6% who had used an illegal site in the past four weeks and another 0.4% who had used one in the past 12 months but not in the past four weeks.
The share is higher among people who already gamble online. Of those who had gambled online in the past year, 2.5% had used an illegal site in the past four weeks, and another 1.5% had done so earlier in the year. In other words, about one in 25 online gamblers used an unlicensed site at some point in the year.
Use was higher among men than women. Over 12 months it was most common among younger adults, particularly those aged 18 to 24, while in the past-four-weeks measure it showed up more among 25 to 34-year-olds. The Commission did not publish sample sizes with the initial findings.
Why the regulator is tracking it
The Commission said use across the population appears low and stable on these measures, but that a group of online gamblers does use these sites and research suggests they are more likely to be harmed. “We want to kick crime out of gambling,” said Sue Young, its Executive Director for Operations. She said the data would inform work with government, the industry, technology firms and financial services to disrupt illegal operators. A related set of questions will be added to the GSGB in 2027.
The release follows the Commission’s third-phase report on what pushes people towards illegal sites. The new numbers give it a baseline to measure that work against as it continues to target unlicensed operators and the payment and advertising routes they rely on.
Enforcement figures from the Commission’s briefing
The same day, acting chief executive Sarah Gardner set out how much more the Commission is doing against illegal sites at its annual CEO Briefing; the speech text was published on 6 November. She said the government has committed £26 million over three years to tackling the illegal market, with the first £7 million arriving just over six months earlier.
Between April and September 2026 the Commission sent 1,005 cease and desist notices to illegal operators and advertisers, against 741 in the whole of the previous financial year. It referred 2,201 websites to search engines for delisting in those six months, compared with 1,068 the year before, and 1,668 sites have been taken down or geo-blocked so far this year, up from 1,134. Gardner said the survey figures, around 1% of adults and 4% of online gamblers over 12 months, will act as a baseline for measuring this work. She also said the Commission wants social media companies to do more about illegal gambling adverts.
What it means for players
An unlicensed site sits outside every protection the Commission enforces. It does not have to verify your age, honour GamStop self-exclusion, tell you how your deposits are protected, offer independent dispute resolution or pay out on fair terms, and you have little recourse if it refuses a withdrawal.
Before you sign up anywhere, check the operator’s licence on the Commission’s public register. Our licence checker explains how, and our guide on how to choose a betting site covers the other checks worth making. Every site on our list of the best UK betting sites holds a current Commission licence. If gambling is starting to feel hard to control, our guide to responsible gambling tools covers deposit limits, GamStop and bank blocks.
Sources
- New survey data to help tackle illegal gambling and protect consumers (Gambling Commission)
- Illegal online gambling - Phase 4: Initial findings from new data on consumer engagement with illegal gambling websites (Gambling Commission)
- CEO Briefing 2026 - Sarah Gardner speech (Gambling Commission)
Written in our own words from the sources above. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will correct it and log it on our corrections page.
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The BettingSeeker News Desk covers regulation, operator news and safer gambling developments in the UK, the US and Canada. Every story is based on primary sources such as regulator announcements, government publications and company filings, or on reporting by established news outlets, and every source is linked at the end of the article.
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