Gambling Commission reveals dramatic increase in illegal gambling website takedowns

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The UK Gambling Commission has revealed it has assisted in the takedown of 264 illegal gambling websites in the last financial year, a significant increase from the previous year.  

Commission CEO Andrew Rhodes made the revelation during his speech at the International Casinos Exhibition’s (ICE) world regulatory briefing in Barcelona on 21 January, where he discussed the current state of the British gambling market, and gave an insight into the regulator’s recent activities. 

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He was keen to stress the Commission’s ongoing focus and desire to combat illegal gambling by showcasing several statistics from the financial year and focusing on the online market. 

Rhodes stated that they have referred over 102,000 URLs to Google in reference to unlicensed online activity in the UK, with 64,000 websites being removed by the search engine and 264 websites being taken down. This is a ten-fold increase from the last financial year. 

The Commission itself has addressed how they are tackling this issue, with Rhodes adding that the regulator has issued over 770 cease and desists and disruption notices, in this financial year to date. This includes 262 cease-and-desists to operators and 205 to advertisers.  

“Our aim is to prevent the illegal market from operating at scale in Great Britain. A significant part of our strategy in doing that is to target our efforts as far upstream as we can – at the level of hosts, payment providers, software providers, search engines and more. 

“We have spent the last two years in particular not just targeting illegal activity but also building our own resources, skills and capabilities. There is more to do of course and that also is true of others in the sector.” 

Rhodes furthered his point by reiterating the Commission’s call for more licensed operators to support them with their efforts.     

This comes after the regulator issued a warning notice after flagging incidents of licensed games providers found on illegal casinos, following calls for licensees to improve their monitoring of business relationships, to ensure they are not facilitating illegal gambling activity.   

Rhodes urged licensees to do their due diligence during a speech in November, to make sure they are not engaged in illegal gambling. Last week, Rhodes spoke at a Harris Hagan webinar, believing his comments were misconstrued by the sector, and that he could not understand why those in the industry would want to work with illegal competitors. 

“While it is not the job of licensed operators to take action against illegal operators, I have firmly encouraged everyone to ensure they have undertaken due diligence regarding their own activities and those of any suppliers they rely on.”

“If the Commission detects illegal activity in any operator – B2C or B2B – we may well immediately suspend their licence. In any event, they face the very real prospect of having their Great Britain licence revoked, which means anything they are supplying to anyone else in Britain will cease immediately.” 

While they will remain in this battle for the foreseeable future, Rhodes is upbeat on the state of the regulated British gambling market, referencing the record results of the most recent gross gambling yield, which was published in October.  

In Q3, which covers the months to the end of September, revenue hit £1.32bn, citing a 16% increase in online slots activity; a record high in British gambling.