Bookmakers in the UK are complaining that restrictions on illegal gambling sites are inadequate and that they are losing out heavily.
An analysis prepared by PwC for a group of gambling companies has found that money spent on unregulated gambling sites had doubled in the past year, to £2.8bn. The number of users of the unlicensed websites had risen in two years from 210,000 to 460,000.
The industry is complaining that the figures show that the unsafe unregulated market is a growing threat to British players.
However, the PwC findings may be coloured by previous experience. Only last month the chief executive of the UK’s Gambling Commission had dismissed PwC analyses on unregulated gambling in 2019 as “not consistent with the intelligence picture.”
CEO Neil McArthur had said that the analysis had not distinguished between black market sites and automated systems.
The betting industry is concerned that politicians will fail to grasp the difference between the licensed and unlicensed websites in the run-up to a major review of UK betting legislation. The review is now under way and if it ends up in a big curb on the entire industry it will drive the business underground and the punters will lose out, notably problem gamblers.
Michael Dugher, CEO of the Betting and Gaming Council, said: “Illicit sites have none of the regulated sector’s consumer protections in place, such as strict ID and age verification, safer gambling messages and the ability to set deposit limits.”
