BGC Five-Point Plan: Tackling the UK's £33bn Black Market Threat

The Betting & Gaming Council (BGC) has called on regulators and government to adopt a five-point plan targeting the UK's growing black market for gambling, warning that illegal stakes could surpass £33 billion within three years if current trends continue.

What Is the Betting & Gaming Council?

The BGC is the UK's standards body for the regulated betting and gaming industry, representing licensed operators across betting shops, online gambling, casinos, and bingo halls. It functions as a trade association and lobbying arm, advocating on behalf of its members — which include most of the major licensed operators — on regulatory, tax, and public-policy matters. The organisation also runs responsible gambling campaigns and publishes industry data. When the BGC speaks on the black market, it does so from a position that is, by definition, not disinterested: its members are the licensed operators who lose market share to unlicensed rivals.

The Scale of the Problem

BGC CEO Grainne Hurst highlighted research suggesting that almost one in five pounds staked online in the UK now potentially ends up with unlicensed operators. According to data from H2 Gambling Capital black market profits and stakes doubled between 2023 and 2025 — a trajectory that should concern anyone who assumed tighter regulation would shrink, rather than redirect, demand.

Separate research from WARC found that illegal operators now account for almost half of all UK gambling advertising spend, with unlicensed advertising projected to overtake the regulated market by 2028.

The Five-Point Plan

The BGC's proposed measures are:

1. Shut down illegal gambling advertising
2. Block illegal gambling websites
3. Focus on payment providers facilitating unlicensed transactions
4. Strengthen accountability and enforcement
5. Go beyond the Gambling Commission's recently established Illegal Gambling Taskforce

Enforcement So Far

Between April 2024 and October 2025, some 447,778 Bing and Google URLs for unlicensed gambling were referred for removal, of which 287,961 were taken down. The BGC evidently considers that pace insufficient given how quickly the black market is expanding.

The intervention comes at a sensitive moment for the licensed sector, which faces Remote Gaming Duty rising to 40% from April 2026 alongside increasingly prescriptive player-protection rules — conditions that, critics argue, push price-sensitive consumers toward unregulated alternatives. Whether the government treats the BGC's plan as a serious policy blueprint or a lobbying exercise from an industry under margin pressure remains to be seen.