Britain's Gambling Commission has published a technical analysis using Open Banking data to examine payments between consumers and unlicensed gambling companies. The project moves beyond web-traffic estimates and surveys by observing anonymised financial transactions in an existing research panel.
The regulator's report says average engagement with licensed operators did not show a notable decline after the first detected transaction with an illegal operator. Within this dataset, unlicensed play therefore appeared more often to supplement regulated gambling than to replace it directly.
Researchers also connected transaction records with survey responses, including Problem Gambling Severity Index scores. The distribution among detected illegal-market users contained a larger relative share of elevated-risk categories than the group for whom only licensed transactions were identified. That association does not establish causation or a national rate of gambling harm.
The analysis carries important limits. As SoloAzar's summary notes, the panel is not nationally representative and some unlicensed payments may not have been detected. The Commission presents the method as a proof of concept that could complement other evidence, not as a definitive measurement of Britain's illegal gambling market.
