The UK Gambling Commission continuously monitors and tracks illegal casinos in the British market.
They came up with numerous restrictive rules, but critics consider them ineffective and even make people eager to pick illicit gambling establishments.
Unregulated Casinos Affect Everyone, Including You!
The black gambling market doubled its player base in the last two years. This is the reality presented in a study by KingCasinoBonus.
The freshly released study explains that in 2019 there were around 500 British bettors on the black gambling market. Until the end of 2022, the number increased by 100%. The data links Google searches with the number of gamblers playing at illegal casinos. They think that GAMSTOP blocks their bonuses and possible offers and don’t actually comprehend how harmful the black market is.
The predictions for the end of 2024 anticipate another 200% increase compared to 2019.
Affects On Gamblers
If you are a punter, you can fall into illegal gambling establishments’ false advertisements trap. After you open an account, they can block it without any reason, withdraw your winnings and steal your data.
Besides that, any website with no working permit or the GAMSTOP program cuts your safety net and allows you to develop a gambling addiction.
Moreover, not all VPNs are trustworthy, so fraudsters can hack you while you use the Private Network to spin the reels.
Effects Over Non-Players
In 2019, gambling activities brought £3.2 billion to the British GDP. If you put it from another perspective, illegal casinos don’t pay taxes, so they did not contribute to that sum.
An unregulated market with unlawful businesses creates discrepancies between salaries, workforce, and overall safety. Therefore, the websites and the players build a network based on money laundering.
UKGS’s Plan to Fight The Unregulated Market & To Help People
In September 2022, the UKGC adopted new rules to help the regulated industry and the players. All these new regulations give details about how they will get unregulated casinos out of gamblers’ sight and methods to create a safe environment for problematic gamblers.
The First Phase
The first phase discusses monitoring specific indicators to help them find gambling harm. An additional point in the plan is interfering between bonus advertisements and avid gamblers, including false advertising from unlawful casinos.
The UKGC will ensure that every regulated online British betting platform will interact with and evaluate its customers and inform them in case of gambling addiction. The casinos will have to show evidence of their interaction with the customers. They also have to be able to comply with the requirements at all times and review the deals with their third-party providers.
By ensuring compliance with the casino’s third parties and regulating ads, the institution hopes to cut the strings that attach bettors to unregulated casinos. They are also confident that they will make gamblers reduce their time and money invested in playing.
The Second Phase
The UKGC’s plan to fight the unregulated casino second phase is planned to become a reality in 2023. They want to make online betting fairer and safer, so they will continue to consult on identifying, keeping track and helping financially vulnerable customers.
They plan to target people who cannot afford to gamble as much as they do, but there are no other mentions of the research’s working mechanisms.
Single Customer View Program
The UKGC and BGC proposed in October 2022 a “Single Customer View” to the International Association of Gaming Regulators (IAGR). This “Single View” refers to an undivided database with all the British gamblers. Every legal casino could access that database and see information about the gamblers.
Gambling establishments would have the power to ensure a safer environment for punters and avid bettors. It would track every player’s spending and the number of websites used.
Is It Applicable?
The Betting and Gaming Council researched this idea’s applicability and implications. The results surprised everyone because 70% of gamblers want to keep their betting data private from the government.
If they don’t share their data, the bodies in charge still promulgate this rule, which could mark the British gambling market as unregulated. In other words, the “Single Customer View” Program would be efficient if the people would cooperate with the government in order to keep the giant from becoming a black market.
The UKCG’s Plan To Protect Children
The UKGC released a long-awaited study with data collected from 2,559 children between 11 to 16 years old.
The official numbers show that 31% of children of that age engaged in gambling whit their own money in 2021 and 37% in 2020. However, the number can be higher because the UKGC cannot collect correct data from unregulated casinos.
Proposed Solutions
The first solution proposed by the regulatory body is better ID verification and stricter age restrictions. Another solution is limiting the interaction by imposing a no-ads rule. Over 50% of children said they started gambling because they saw TV advertisements.
The first step already taken is to ban gambling with credit cards in the UK. The results of this ban will be announced in 2023, but everyone considers that this also decreases the unregulated casinos’ popularity.
Final Take on the Future of the Regulated Gambling Market
The UKGC is one of the most powerful regulatory bodies in the gambling industry. Casinos with UKGC and MGA licences are considered the safest platforms to bet on. Although both institutions license over 500 casinos, some gamblers still choose illegal casinos for various reasons.
The institution’s plan to fight the unregulated market started from the beginning of online betting and will never end. It’s complicated, and some rules are hard to be accepted by people, but there is enough progress to prove their work quality and compliance with people’s needs.
