BGC Warns UK Black Market Could Hit £33bn by 2028

⏱ 3 min read

The Betting and Gaming Council has gone public with a stark warning for the entire UK industry: the illegal gambling market could nearly double to £33 billion by 2028, up from £17 billion in 2025. On June 8, 2026, the trade body unveiled a five-point plan urging government, regulators, payment providers, and tech platforms to act before licensed operators are squeezed out of their own market.

The intervention lands weeks after the Department for Culture, Media and Sport published terms of reference for a new Illegal Gambling Taskforce, and just days after the UK Gambling Commission and Advertising Standards Authority announced AI-assisted monitoring of gambling marketing. For operators, the message is clear: the regulatory conversation in 2026 is no longer just about tightening rules on licensed brands — it's about whether the black market is being allowed to grow around them.

The numbers behind the warning

The BGC, which represents around 90% of the UK's regulated betting and gaming industry, built its case on forecasts from H2 Gambling Capital. The consultancy estimates that stakes placed with illegal operators have already reached £16.6 billion, more than tripling since 2019 and doubling in the past two years alone. If the trajectory holds, black market stakes could exceed £33 billion by 2028 — meaning roughly one in five pounds staked online in the UK would go to an unlicensed operator.

Separately, research from WARC found that illegal operators now account for almost half of all UK gambling advertising spend, and could overtake licensed operators on ad spend entirely by 2028. BGC chief executive Grainne Hurst called the figures a "wake-up call" for everyone involved in consumer protection.

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The five-point plan, explained

The BGC's proposal sets out five concrete asks, aimed at different points in the black market's supply chain — from how illegal sites get found, to how they get paid, to how they get punished.

• Advertising: require social media platforms to remove unlawful gambling content and ads, targeting the channel WARC says now carries nearly half of all UK gambling advertising spend.
• Site and app blocking: give the UK Gambling Commission stronger, faster powers to block illegal websites and remove unlicensed apps — a response to operators that can spin up mirror sites within days of a takedown.
• Payments: stop payment providers from processing transactions linked to illegal gambling operators, cutting off the financial rails that let black market sites collect and pay out stakes.
• Enabler penalties: introduce "meaningful penalties" for companies that knowingly provide advertising, hosting, or payment services to illegal operators.
• Criminal sanctions: toughen criminal penalties for operators running unlicensed gambling businesses targeting UK consumers, framed as both a deterrent and a tool for law enforcement.

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Why now: the regulatory backdrop

The timing is not incidental. The DCMS recently published terms of reference for an Illegal Gambling Taskforce, which the BGC welcomed but described as only a first step. The Gambling Commission itself has acknowledged that disruption efforts against unlicensed operators remain at an "early stage" — its own figures show that between April 2024 and October 2025, 447,778 search URLs linked to unlicensed gambling were referred for removal, with 287,961 actually taken down.

The plan also arrives alongside a separate leadership shift at DCMS, where Emma Floyd was confirmed on June 8 as the department's new Director of Sport and Gambling, replacing Ben Dean. Floyd's background is in energy and climate policy rather than gambling, and she now inherits a sector where, as one industry report put it, "very few regulatory issues currently attract broad agreement."

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What it means for licensed operators

For brands like growl.games, the framing matters. The BGC's argument is that every player who drifts to an unlicensed site is one the regulated market loses entirely — no safer gambling checks, no KYC, no route to redress, and no contribution to UK tax via the Remote Gaming Duty, which rose to 40% earlier in 2026. The table below sets out how the two markets compare on the protections regulators and the BGC are now pointing to.

Safeguard	Licensed UK operators	Illegal/unlicensed operators
Age & ID verification	Mandatory KYC before deposit	None or self-declared
Safer gambling checks	Affordability checks, deposit limits, Early Risk Detection	Not applied
Anti-money laundering	Enhanced due diligence, sanctions screening	Not applied
UK tax contribution	40% Remote Gaming Duty	None
Dispute resolution	UKGC-backed complaints & ADR routes	No redress route

If the five-point plan gains traction with government, the practical impact for licensed operators could be twofold: less competitive pressure from untaxed, unregulated rivals, but also closer scrutiny of how operators themselves handle advertising and payment partners — areas the plan explicitly targets for "enabler" accountability.

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Sources

This article draws on the BGC's public statement and independent coverage from gaming-industry trade press.

The black market is growing fast, becoming more visible and attracting billions of pounds in stakes from British consumers. These forecasts are a wake-up call for everyone involved in protecting consumers.

— Grainne Hurst, Chief Executive, Betting and Gaming Council · Five-point plan announcement, June 8, 2026