EU Illegal Gambling Market Hits €91.6bn, Costing States €22.9bn in Tax

⏱ 3 min read

The European Union's illegal online gambling market swelled to €91.6 billion in 2025 — a 14% year-on-year rise — according to a new annual impact study commissioned by the European Casino Association (ECA) and conducted by Gambling Compliance International (GCI). The figure was unveiled at a high-level parliamentary roundtable on 3 July 2026, hosted in the European Parliament by MEP Lukas Mandl.

The surge has cost EU governments an estimated €22.9 billion in lost tax revenue for the year, as more than 6,200 unlicensed operators actively target European consumers — with 71% of all online gambling activity directed at EU players now flowing through unregulated websites. The ECA used the occasion to push for an expanded Europol mandate and a coordinated enforcement response across EU institutions.

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Scale of the Illegal Market

The €91.6 billion market size represents a near-doubling of the illegal segment compared to estimates from just a few years ago. The GCI study — the most comprehensive annual audit of EU black-market gambling — identifies 6,200+ unlicensed operators as its core finding. These platforms operate from outside EU jurisdiction, face no domestic AML scrutiny, and carry no obligation to enforce player protection tools such as deposit limits or self-exclusion.

The scale is no longer a fringe problem. With 71% of online gambling revenues in EU markets now attributed to unlicensed sites, legal operators are competing at a structural disadvantage: they carry full compliance costs while black-market rivals undercut them on bonuses, odds, and withdrawal terms with zero regulatory overhead.

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Tax Revenue Impact on Member States

The €22.9 billion tax shortfall is spread across all 27 EU member states, though the burden falls hardest on markets with established licensing frameworks — Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands — where consumer demand is high but enforcement capacity remains fragmented along national lines. Unlicensed operators collect revenues from these markets but remit nothing to local treasuries.

• Illegal operators generate no VAT, gross gaming revenue tax, or corporate tax within the jurisdictions they target.
• Players on unlicensed platforms have no statutory recourse for disputes or withdrawal refusals.
• AML reporting obligations — set to be standardised across the EU under Regulation (EU) 2024/1624 from 10 July 2027 — do not apply to unregistered entities, leaving them structurally outside the compliance perimeter.

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The Push for Europol Powers

ECA Chair Erwin van Lambaart told the parliamentary roundtable that national authorities are structurally outmatched against operators that routinely target customers across multiple European jurisdictions while remaining outside any local regulatory reach. The ECA's position is that only EU-level enforcement can close that gap.

The roundtable came weeks after the European Commission tabled a legislative proposal on 24 June 2026 to expand Europol's operational mandate — a move the ECA has explicitly backed. Under the proposal, Europol would gain a more direct role in cross-border investigations, including those targeting illegal gambling networks. European Commission Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen acknowledged that existing tools — including the Digital Services Act — already require platforms to assess and reduce unlawful material, but stopped short of endorsing a dedicated gambling-specific enforcement mechanism.

The ECA is calling for coordinated action involving Europol, the Anti-Money Laundering Authority (AMLA), Eurojust, national financial intelligence units, and national gambling regulators operating under a unified cross-border framework.

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Operator and Policy Implications

For licensed operators, the report reinforces pressure on regulators to tighten IP blocking, payment blocking, and affiliate referral enforcement — the three primary channels through which illegal operators reach EU consumers. Several member states already deploy these tools; the ECA's argument is that without EU-level coordination, operators can simply redirect traffic to an unblocked domain the moment one is taken down.

• Payment blocking remains the most effective short-term enforcement tool, already deployed in Italy, France, and the Netherlands.
• IP and DNS blocking is enforceable under national law but inconsistently applied across the EU-27.
• Affiliate compliance is an emerging enforcement priority — licensed affiliates caught directing traffic to unlicensed operators risk losing their own authorisations.
• The AMLA technical standards published on 8 July 2026 — a four-tier breach severity scale — apply only to licensed entities, leaving the black-market AML gap structurally unaddressed at the transaction level.

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Illegal vs Legal: Market Comparison

Metric	Licensed EU Market	Illegal EU Market
Estimated Revenue (2025)	~€37 billion (est.)	€91.6 billion
Year-on-Year Growth	~5–7%	~14%
Active Operators	Hundreds (nationally licensed)	6,200+
Tax Contribution	Full GGR / corporate / VAT liability	Zero
AML Obligations	Full (Regulation EU 2024/1624)	None enforced
Player Protections	Mandatory (self-exclusion, limits)	Voluntary / absent
Share of EU Online Activity	~29%	~71%

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Sources

Primary and secondary sources consulted for this article, listed in order of evidentiary weight.

Illegal online gambling is a fast-growing, cross-border problem that puts players at risk and deprives member states of billions in tax revenue — it demands strong political will and coordinated public-private enforcement at the European level.

— Erwin van Lambaart, Chair, European Casino Association · European Parliament Roundtable, 3 July 2026