Gambling Commission Publishes First Estimates of Illegal Gambling Site Use

What was published

On 5 November 2026, the Gambling Commission published its first estimates of how many people in Great Britain use illegal gambling websites. The figures come from the Gambling Survey for Great Britain and were released with an updated Illegal Gambling Data Dashboard, which the Commission says will track engagement over time and the effect of its work to disrupt illegal operators. The release coincided with the Commission's CEO Briefing event.

The basis for this report

This report is based on the Commission's own news release of 5 November 2026. We have not seen the full survey tables, and the release we read does not give the sample size or name the organisation that carried out the fieldwork. The figures below are the ones the Commission published in that release, and it describes them as initial estimates.

The confirmed figures

Across the whole population, 94.4% showed no indication of using an illegal gambling website. Over the past 12 months, engagement was higher among men than women and more common among younger adults, especially those aged 18 to 24.

Sue Young, the Commission's Executive Director for Operations, said: "We want to kick crime out of gambling." She said engagement with the illegal market appears low and stable across the population as a whole, but that research suggests consumers who use illegal operators are more likely to experience harm.

UK context and who is affected

The survey covers Great Britain. For readers of this site, the relevance is practical: an illegal website serving British customers has no Gambling Commission licence, so it will not be listed as a licensed business on the public register that we use to trace brands to their operators. The Commission's long-standing advice to consumers is to check that a gambling business is licensed, and it says licensed businesses must display their licensed status and link to the register. The protections that come with a licence apply to licensed businesses, which is why the check matters.

What remains unknown

The release gives headline rates, not counts of websites or names of operators, and it does not say which illegal sites people used. It notes that motivations for using illegal operators vary and cannot be put down to a single factor. Because these are initial estimates, later updates to the dashboard may refine them; we will not treat them as a trend until the Commission publishes comparable figures for later periods.

Further context

If you want to check a brand yourself, our guide on how to check whether two casino brands are related explains how to read a website's footer and the register, and brand, operator and software provider explained covers the basic terms. More background pieces are in Industry Explainers.