UK study links illegal gambling with harm indicators
UK Gambling Commission research has identified a higher concentration of problem gambling indicators among people with detected transactions involving illegal operators. Published on October 28, the study links anonymized banking records with survey information, while warning that its findings cannot establish causation or measure the overall size of the illegal market.
Among individuals with detected illegal gambling transactions, 45% had a Problem Gambling Severity Index score of eight or above. The corresponding figure was 6% among all licensed non-lottery gambling customers in the dataset. These are within-sample comparisons, rather than nationally representative estimates.
The groups also overlap. Among people with repeated detected illegal transactions, 91% continued to transact with licensed operators. The analysis therefore does not describe a simple division between customers using exclusively legal services and those using exclusively illegal ones.
“It does not show a substantial shift away from the licensed market following individuals first known engagement with an unlicensed operator,” the report states. Researchers instead found illegal transactions occurring alongside established patterns of licensed gambling.
Banking analysis identifies activity but leaves important gaps
The underlying dataset contained banking records from 38,000 people between July 2018 and July 2026. YouGov collected the information with participants’ consent and linked transactions to other research information through anonymized identifiers. The Commission conducted the analysis with technical and infrastructure support from Warwick Business School.
Researchers identified 3,426 unique transactions believed to involve illegal operators, made by 179 individuals. PGSI information was available for 146 of them. Attempts to locate transactions simply by searching for known operators’ names were unsuccessful; researchers subsequently used transaction descriptions and merchant names associated with suspected illegal activity.
The Commission cautioned that the sample slightly overrepresented men and underrepresented women, particularly women older than 55. Participants had also chosen to share banking information for research in exchange for a small incentive, creating another distinction from a representative population survey.
Coverage was limited to cash transactions recorded by institutions supporting open banking. Cryptocurrency payments were excluded, and the identification process covered only a subset of illegal operators. Consequently, some illegal transactions could remain unidentified even within the records of people already detected using unlicensed services.
The regulator explicitly said the data could not establish the illegal market’s absolute size or its share relative to licensed gambling. It also said the study design did not allow causal analysis of illegal spending and harm, and could not proactively identify previously unknown illegal operators.
