igamingbusiness . com FEATURE
Europe ’ s illegal market :
what ’ s the solution ?
Licensed online gambling faces persistent roadblocks in stamping out its nefarious counterpart . Although the industry is progressing its understanding of illegal players , are enforcement efforts still falling short ? Nicole Macedo reports
T wo years ago iGB reported on the ineffective action taken against the black market , and since then little seems to have changed . What has progressed is analysts ’ understanding of consumer activity and the alarming scale of illegal online gambling . The problem runs deep – probably much deeper than most industry estimates would suggest .
While enforcement efforts to stifle the legal sector ’ s nefarious counterpart are ongoing , some measures are actually serving to push players into the arms of these illegal sites .
By better understanding the illegal market ’ s size , efforts to stamp the black market out can improve and authorities can target illegitimate players more directly . In its annual CEO briefing on 14 November , the UK Gambling Commission revealed it is seeking to better understand the various cohorts of online gamblers and predict why they are being enticed by illegal offerings . It is doing so via an evaluation of the UK ’ s illegal gambling sector , which will be published in the spring .
But collecting consumer data to accurately depict trends in their activities across illegal sites is a seemingly impossible task . And some suspect governments and regulators are manipulating the available data to mask the true scale of the problem .
“ How do you calculate something that ’ s not recorded anywhere ? It ’ s a bit like calculating the size of the black
ICE 2025 • ISSUE 137 • 29