UKGC Looking for Head of Illegal Markets - but is it enough?
The Gambling Commission have put out a job posting for a new, dedicated Head of Illegal Markets role to help lead the fight against the black market. But can one person really get the increasingly more difficult job done?
I’ve talked a lot about the scourge of the black market recently, which is infecting our industry across multiple fronts.
It takes two minutes and a couple of Google searches of perfectly reasonably player queries, like “best new bingo sites” or “independent casino sites” to see that the results pages have become gummed up with spam, poor quality results and most alarmingly, hacked sites promoting illegal and unregulated websites. One of the most shocking things which consistently appears in Google searches is the advertisement to people who have tried to self-exclude through GAMSTOP. These purveyors of brands designed to get around these protections are quite frankly sick!
Beyond the Google problem, there are the newly enforced tax rises which some operators and commentators have claimed may contribute to more players looking towards illegal markets.
In my blog, I spoke about why we’ve updated and rolled out a new How We Review policy for 2026, to shed light on how we are trying to bolster a fair, protected and legal industry by giving users balanced reviews of regulated sites, from experts who actually play! But right now we are fighting against a heavy tide which seems intent on putting the customer at risk.
The Gambling Commission, the UK’s regulator, is obviously aware at some level that they are losing the battle. They have been trying to get Google to strike down much of the illegal content, but for every page struck down, another pops up in its placed.
So, what’s the plan?
This leads us to the new job posting for a dedicated “Head of Illegal Markets” position to try to “shape, and lead our response to Illegal Gambling.” Some of the seriously high stake responsibilities to attempt to smash the black market include:
- Formulating an illegal gambling strategy
- Intelligence Gathering
- Disrupting illegal activity
- Overseeing investigations into illegal operators
- Working with everyone from operators and tech providers to regulators with a focus on cross sector collaboration
Back in February, the Head of the Gambling Commission admitted that they had neither the resources nor the man-power to tackle the illegal sector in a so-called “iniquity of arms.”
Some commentators, including the compliance consultant Nigel Harvey, have thrown some cold water on the idea that a new individual, on a salary of £65,000 per year, can possibly halt this growing problem on their own.
The UKGC has conducted research to try to understand the scale of the problem, but they’ve admitted that they haven’t got a clear picture yet. Other proposals have included raising licence fees on regulated operators to increase resources to tackle the problem. Of course, like the tax rises, this could have the unintended consequence of making the environment even more difficult for licenced brands, and therefore opening the door to yet more illegal operators!
WDW Bingo’s Pledge
I, of course, support the Gambling Commission’s mission to combat this growing scourge. The gambling industry is sometimes vilified in the media. But the truth is, a tightly regulated, safe and high quality industry with strong guardrails and protections for the vulnerable is so much better than a ravaged industry at the mercy of illegal and bad-faith operators.
As always, our pledge is to provide expert reviews and top quality listings of the best, UK regulated bingo and casino brands to players in this country. As the Head of WDW Bingo, who leads a team of passionate writers and reviewers, I can say that is what I am striving for. I hope the Gambling Commission is able to get on top of this and we can right the ship!
