What the 2024 report said about unlicensed gambling in Britain
Updated: Sep 20
A headline about billions of pounds going through unlicensed gambling sites is bound to get attention. Before drawing conclusions, though, it helps to ask what the figure measures and where it came from.
In September 2024, Frontier Economics published research commissioned by the Betting and Gaming Council. Drawing on a survey of more than 6,000 people, it estimated at least £2.7 billion in annual online stakes with unlicensed operators. Its wider estimate, including offline activity, reached up to £4.3 billion.
Those are estimates of stakes, not a statement that customers lost £4.3 billion. Money can be wagered more than once, so turnover and customer losses describe different things. The researchers also acknowledged that an illegal market is difficult to measure.
The BGC used the findings to argue that regulation should avoid pushing customers towards unlicensed businesses. That is the commissioning organisation’s policy argument; the estimates alone do not prove that every new protection causes people to leave regulated sites.
For a reader checking a gambling website, the practical question is simpler: does the actual domain appear under an active licence in the Gambling Commission’s register? A familiar-looking logo or a claim in a website footer is not enough on its own.
These figures belong to the 2024 report. They should be read with their date, funding and limitations attached, rather than presented as a precise live count of an otherwise hidden market.
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