A Gambling Commission analysis of open-banking data found that 91% of people with repeated detected payments to illegal gambling operators also used licensed operators. The regulator said the pattern suggests that unlicensed play often sits alongside existing regulated activity rather than replacing it.
The official study identified 3,426 suspected illegal transactions involving 179 people. Researchers found no substantial sustained fall in licensed gambling after a person's first detected illegal payment, while illegal transactions frequently appeared in short clusters near licensed transactions.
The data also showed a concentration of gambling harm within the detected group. Of 146 people with available Problem Gambling Severity Index scores, 45% scored eight or more, compared with 6% among licensed non-lottery gamblers in the same dataset. The comparison does not establish that illegal gambling caused those harms.
The Commission's limitations statement says the sample was not nationally representative, did not include cryptocurrency payments and captured only a subset of unlicensed operators. It therefore cannot estimate the size of Britain's illegal market. Of the transactions it did identify, 96% came from current accounts and 4% from credit cards.
