The Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) has launched an extensive political lobbying campaign, calling on the United Kingdom government to take immediate action to counter the rapid expansion of unlicensed black-market gambling operators.
Acting as the primary representative body for the country’s licensed commercial betting sector, the BGC has published a comprehensive four-step regulatory framework designed to protect consumers and insulate state tax revenues from offshore exploitation.
Addressing the Alarming Growth of Unlicensed Betting
The BGC’s aggressive policy push serves as a direct response to a surge in unapproved online betting activity. Citing a series of independent data tracking briefs compiled by H2 Gambling Capital, the council highlighted that black-market profits and total stakes have effectively doubled between 2023 and 2025.
Grainne Hurst, CEO of the Betting and Gaming Council, warned that if current regulatory trends continue without immediate intervention, unlicensed handles could severely compromise consumer safety within the next three years:
“These forecasts are a wake-up call for everyone involved in protecting consumers. If current trends continue, black market gambling stakes could exceed £33bn within three years, with almost one in every five pounds staked online potentially ending up with illegal operators.
Government, regulators, technology companies and payment providers must work together to stop illegal operators reaching British consumers, cut off their funding and hold those who facilitate their activities accountable.”
To address this trend, the BGC’s first step demands that lawmakers systematically shut down illegal gambling advertising. Pointing to specialized marketing research from WARC, the council revealed that unlicensed offshore brands currently account for nearly half of all UK gambling advertising expenditure and are on track to completely overtake regulated marketing volumes by 2028.
This push coincides with a recent joint announcement from the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and the Gambling Commission (GC) detailing a new phase of AI-assisted marketing monitoring designed to catch licensed operators who violate CAP Code guidelines. The BGC is demanding that identical, aggressive technological enforcement streams be directed toward offshore competitors.
Enhancing Website Blocking and Payment Gateway Penalties
The remaining pillars of the BGC’s lobbying strategy focus on dismantling the technological and financial pipelines that keep the black market viable. Step two calls on parliament to grant the Gambling Commission stronger statutory powers to block illegal websites and remove unlicensed gaming applications from app stores.
While data published by the regulator in October 2025 indicated that 447,778 Bing and Google URLs for unlicensed operations were successfully referred, resulting in the deletion of 287,961 links between April and October 2024, the commission admitted its disruption protocols are still at an early stage. The BGC maintains that speed must be accelerated to minimize consumer exposure.
Step three targets the core transaction ecosystems of offshore operators by forcing payment providers to cut off processing channels for un-licensed networks. Because underground casinos rely entirely on fast, digital payment processing to retain players, the BGC is demanding that financial regulators impose meaningful penalties on any banking gateway or transactional provider that profits from processing illicit gambling funds.
Finally, step four centers on strict judicial accountability, urging lawmakers to introduce severe criminal sanctions for the direct perpetrators of illegal gambling that accurately reflect the profound social and financial harm they inflict on British consumers. While acknowledging the creation of the Gambling Commission’s new Illegal Gambling Taskforce, the BGC insists that a unified enforcement front across tech firms, payment gateways, and state agencies is required to secure the UK’s regulated framework.
