Key Points
- BGC’s announcement of 24th August 2026 states that illegal companies will collect £800m from Premier League wagers this year and go up to £1bn in the next season.
- Remote Gaming Duty increased from 21% to 40% in April 2026, while General Betting Duty is scheduled to increase to 25% from 15% in April 2027.
- H2 Gambling Capital estimates that illegal online gambling stakes in the UK might increase twice as much, from £17bn in 2025 to more than £33bn by 2028.
Every Premier League Weekend, Millions Flow to Criminal Bookmakers
Kick-off arrived for the 2026/27 Premier League season with something new missing from the shirts. Gambling brands are gone from the front of club kits for the first time, the result of a voluntary agreement clubs struck in 2023. For the government, that looked like progress. For the Betting and Gaming Council, it is only part of the picture, and perhaps the less urgent part.
On 24 August 2026, the BGC sent a formal letter warning that unlicensed bookmakers are forecast to take up to £800 million in Premier League bets across this season, with that figure set to reach £1 billion the following season. On a typical matchday weekend, between £15 million and £20 million already flows to illegal operators, and the BGC expects the opening round of fixtures to sit near the top of that range.
Grainne Hurst, Chief Executive of the Betting and Gaming Council, did not soften her language: “These operators pay no tax, fund nothing and answer to no one. Every pound they take is a pound lost to British sport and to the Treasury.”
The Tax Squeeze That Is Widening the Gap
The BGC’s warning did not arrive in isolation. It landed during the most expensive regulatory period licensed operators have faced in years, and the costs are still climbing.
In April 2026, Remote Gaming Duty went up from 21% to 40%, which was the largest increase ever experienced in the duty’s lifetime and affected online casinos and slot game operators especially heavily. Sports betting operators are also faced with an increase in General Betting Duty, which will go up from 15% to 25% in April 2027 and will include nearly all remote bets except for UK horse races. In addition, from 1 October 2026, Gambling Commission operating license fees also go up by 25%.
Illegal operators carry none of those obligations. No duty, no licence fee, no compliance infrastructure. The gap between running a licensed UK betting site and running an offshore one is growing wider with each policy change. Critically, the government’s own published Treasury analysis acknowledged that operators may respond to rising duty by cutting odds, and that some customers would move to illegal sites as a result. That concession did not pause the tax schedule.
How Big Is the Illegal Market? Bigger Than the Headline Figures Suggest
Putting a precise number on the black market is hard. Research groups use different methods, and the figures diverge significantly depending on what is counted.
Frontier Economics, in a 2024 study commissioned by the BGC, estimated £2.7 billion was wagered annually with illegal online operators, with approximately 1.5 million people using the wider black market. H2 Gambling Capital’s more recent analysis placed offshore betting turnover at £16.6 billion in 2025, up from roughly £5 billion in 2019, with offshore gross gambling yield rising from £200 million to £685 million across the same period.
The methodologies differ, but the direction does not. According to H2 Gambling Capital estimates, the illegal gambling market in the United Kingdom may grow to reach above £33 billion in the period from 2025 to 2028, with each fifth pound bet online in the UK ending up in the hands of black market sites. The situation in Sweden provides us with a much clearer understanding of the threat: According to the Swedish regulator, channelisation of the online casino product was down to 68% in 2025, while the sports betting rate remained at 95%.
Shirts Are Cleaner, But the Black Market Is Louder Than Ever
Removing gambling brands from Premier League shirts was framed as reducing exposure. It may be doing something else entirely.
WARC research found that unregulated operators now account for almost half of all UK gambling advertising spend, with their share forecast to exceed 50% of total sector investment by 2028. Social media and sponsorships are driving that growth, with unlicensed firms accelerating spend in the exact channels where regulated operators are pulling back.
The numbers from the 2025 season make this harder to dismiss. Research from the University of Bristol’s gambling harms hub found that one in ten gambling ads during the 2025 Premier League opening weekend came from operators without a UK licence, totalling 2,412 messages from 13 brands across a single weekend. Ministers are now reviewing a wider ban on unlicensed gambling companies sponsoring British sport. The BGC supports the move, but wants it extended across all British sport, not limited to Premier League shirt placements.
How Bettors Find Illegal Sites?
The Gambling Commission has identified several clear routes leading punters to unlicensed platforms.
Some are looking for better odds or promotion offers that can be offered only by illegal operators. Some want to avoid going through any form of identity checks while others have been restricted from playing on licensed sites due to signs of problem gambling behaviour. Many have gone on the Gamstop national self-exclusion list and actively look for sites that do not run under the scheme. Social media personalities, affiliate marketing agents, and even cryptocurrency platforms encourage users to visit such sites. Customers will have no protection measures required under the UK gambling license when on such websites.
Expert Analysis
Here is the question we keep coming back to: is the government building a safer gambling market, or quietly handing one to criminal operators? The BGC has skin in this game, no question. Licensed operators thrive in an environment where taxation is low and compliance requirements are not stringent; thus, the £1 billion figure requires examination, not merely sensationalisation. However, examination is not necessarily condemnation.
Our reading is that the direction is real, even if the exact number is not guaranteed. H2 Gambling Capital arrived at the same conclusion independently. The government’s own Treasury economists wrote the risk into their published impact assessment and pressed ahead anyway. Sweden already shows what happens when online casinos leak to offshore sites; that leak reached 32% of total activity. A live example, not a distant warning.
What genuinely concerns us is the timing. Three cost increases land on licensed operators between April 2026 and April 2027, each widening the margin advantage for offshore sites that pay nothing. If punters notice their licensed bookmaker’s odds have quietly shortened while an unlicensed site offers better returns, the choice becomes obvious. April 2027 will reveal whether the government’s tax ambition and its black market ambition can survive in the same policy. We are not convinced they can.
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