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Unregulated Online Gambling Hits $5.9 Trillion in 2025, GCI Report Reveals

A new Gaming Compliance International study ranks the global black market as the world’s third-largest economy, accounting for 78% of online GGR and dwarfing every nation except the United States and China.

Category: iGaming News - Global · By Growl Games Editorial Team · Thu May 21 2026 · Updated Thu Jul 23 2026

Unregulated Online Gambling Hits $5.9 Trillion in 2025, GCI Report Reveals

Table of Contents

1. Report Summary

A new report from Gaming Compliance International (GCI), titled GCI Online Gaming 2025: Global and published on 18 May 2026, estimates that unregulated online gambling reached $5.9 trillion in global wagering value in 2025. The figure exceeds the GDP of every country except the United States and China, prompting GCI to label the black market the “world’s third-largest economy” and the largest form of cybercrime globally.

2. The Numbers Behind the Headline

The wagering handle covers unlicensed sports betting, casino, poker, crypto gambling, and lotteryactivity targeting local markets. According to GCI:

  • 2023 unregulated handle: $5.1 trillion
  • 2024 unregulated handle: $5.7 trillion (+12% year-on-year)
  • 2025 unregulated handle: $5.9 trillion (+4% year-on-year)
  • Share of global online GGR: 78% unregulated vs. 22% regulated

The slowdown from 12% growth in 2024 to 4% in 2025 suggests enforcement is having some marginal impact, but the absolute scale continues to expand.

3. The “White Noise Marketplace”

GCI introduces a new three-tier model for the online gaming market: regulated, unregulated, and “unacknowledged”. The unacknowledged tier captures products that replicate gambling mechanics but sit outside traditional classification, including prediction markets, social casinos, online sweepstakes, skins trading, and TikTok-style contests.

GCI President Ismail Vali warned that the audience does not distinguish between these layers, producing a “White Noise Marketplace” where licensed operators, offshore sites, and gambling-adjacent products appear side by side with little visible difference for the user.

4. Regional Enforcement and Reactions

The report lands as several jurisdictions sharpen enforcement:

  • Brazil has declared prediction markets illegal, with telecoms regulator Anatel blocking 28 platforms.
  • Gibraltar has taken the opposite route, licensing Predict Street under its existing gambling legislation.
  • Turkey continues its 2025–2026 Action Plan against illegal betting, with the latest raids on 18 May 2026 netting 233 suspects across Antalya and Mersin and exposing TL18 billion (€340 million) in illegal gambling transactions.
  • GCI flagged that unregulated gambling advertisements appeared on more than 80% of illegal sports streaming during major events in 2024 and 2025.

5. What It Means for Operators

For licensed operators, the data reframes the competitive landscape. GCI’s central argument is that regulators are still designing frameworks for a two-sector market that no longer exists. As the unacknowledged sector grows alongside the unregulated one, licensed operators lose commercial revenue, governments lose tax receipts, and consumer protections become harder to enforce. The report also notes the UK offshore unregulated market alone reached £16.6 billion ($22 billion) in 2025, up roughly 230% from £5 billion in 2019, per separate H2 Capital research cited alongside the GCI findings.

“At $5.9 trillion in wagering value, unregulated online gambling is one of the largest economic systems in the world, operating largely outside regulatory oversight.”
— Matt Holt, CEO, Gaming Compliance International

6. Sources

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