A study initiated by the Betting and Gaming Council U.K. lobby group has revealed that as many as 200,000 local online gambling participants had made a combined 27 million visits to unlicensed online gambling web sites over a recent twelve-month period. The punters placed around £1.4 billion ($1.8 billion) in accumulated wagers. The London based organization which represents around 90% of gaming, sports betting, casino and bingo operators in the United Kingdom used a press release to highlight the results collected by professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The Betting and Gaming Council has formally warned the U.K. government about the potential danger of unintentionally driving online gambling fans into the realm of non regulated suppliers of gambling services. The Betting and Gaming Council is consists of large operators such as Flutter Entertainment William Hill and Entain and it explained that this study revealed that such sites currently account for around 2.5% of all online gambling business in the United Kingdom with nearly 9% of all associated search results being for ‘black market’ domains. It was stated by the association the results of the in depth inquiry also demonstrated that the proposed introduction of a wide range of new safeguards such as strict identity and age verification checks as well as deposit limits and time outs could unintentionally drive players towards the illegal online ‘black market,’ where there is no protection from unscrupulous operators.
Chief Executive for the Betting and Gaming Council, Michael Dugher commented, “The regulated betting and gaming industry employs 100,000 men and women and pays £3.2 billion ($4.2 billion) a year in tax to the treasury. So, the government needs to be wary of doing anything that puts that at risk. Millions of people in the United Kingdom enjoy an occasional flutter whether that be on sports, at the bingo, on the lottery or online and it is vitally important that they are able to do so in a safe environment rather than via the unscrupulous ‘black market’.”
