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UKGC Double Down on Fight Against Unlicensed Casinos
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Harrison Score

UKGC Double Down on Fight Against Unlicensed Casinos

This October, the Gambling Commission released new research on the scale of unlicensed gambling in the UK and how they plan to combat it.

At WDW Bingo, we’re thrilled to hear the UKGC are making serious steps to identify and cripple what is a rather large black market.

These sites are sadly not too hard to find. Some of our less respectable comparison site competitors will even list and market such sites to UK players. Shame, indeed!

Players may not always know the difference and can be lured into taking bonuses that look too good to be true. Your money is never safe at an offshore, unlicensed casino and you could be helping to fund illegal activity. It also undermines our legitimate, tax-paying industry that is an important part of the British economy.

WDW Bingo is proudly compliant with UK law and supports a fully licensed, fully regulated industry. We only work with licensed operators and you have our guarantee that every single brand that is listed on our website is regulated in the UK.

That’s why we’re amplifying the efforts of the GC to root out these scourge sites which help to blight our industry’s name!

So what are the Gambling Commission doing?

In recent years, the Gambling Commission has been strengthening its resources to tackle the black market sector. That means it is finally able to deal with the scale of issue, which might be more considerable than we even realised.

Since April 2024, they’ve made huge strides. They have:

  • Issued over 750 Cease and Desist letters. This includes over 250 to bad operators and almost 200 to advertisers, which presumably include some of those comparison sites who are giving us all a bad name!
  • Referred over 78,000 webpages to Google for being illicit. Amazingly, Google have removed over 50,000 of these already and 255 websites have been taken down.

The latter is more than a tenfold increase from the year prior. That is the sort of scaling up operation that we like to see!

The Commission also intends to cooperate with more global bodies, such as the International Association of Gaming Regulators, to continue the momentum and snuff out the source of this illegal activity. Working with payment providers will also be crucial in this battle.

Next year, they will publish their full research complete with statistical analysis for an entirely research led response.

The Future of Gambling in the UK

With the implementation of updated gambling regulation coming down the track as a result of the White Paper, and the new Government signalling potential tax rises in the upcoming budget, it is important that the regulated industry stays viable. That is not to say that gambling is a perfect business; there have been many issues over the years.

Not everyone likes gambling as a form of entertainment, but for those that do they deserve a good experience. Players have the right to a fair, fun and safe environment when they gamble online. A well regulated industry with good safeguards ensures that! And unlicensed casinos which are freely available to UK users definitely undermines it. We also need a strong roster of licensed products to keep players away from the temptations of illegal casinos as well!

So that’s why we at WDW Bingo heartily endorse the Gambling Commission’s efforts to go after the black market, as well as the advertisers that give sites like us a bad name. We’re a small, independent business who want a safe and healthy industry for all.

If you have any questions about our licensed sites guarantee, or you want to know more about how to tell if a casino is unregulated, then leave a comment below and we’ll answer the best we can!


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