ICE Comissão de Jogos de Azar auxilia na remoção de 264 sites ilegais
Imagem: Presidente executivo da Comissão de Jogos, Andrew Rhodes / Divulgação

Executive Chairman of the UK Gambling Commission, Andrew Rhodes, made the revelation during a speech at the ICE World Regulatory Briefing. Rhodes discussed the state of the British betting market and offered insights into the regulator’s recent activities.

He was keen to highlight the commission’s continued focus and commitment to combating illegal gambling. Regarding this, Rhodes revealed several statistics from the current financial year to demonstrate, focusing on the online market.

This, Rhodes said, includes reporting more than 102,000 irregular domains to Google. Of this total, 64,000 sites were removed by the search engine giant, while 264 sites were taken down. The latest number exceeds the total that was banned in the previous fiscal year.

Rhodes also laid out details of how the Gambling Commission itself is dealing with illegal gambling. He said in the fiscal year to date, the regulator has issued more than 770 cease and desist and discontinuance notices. As such, this includes 262 cease and desist notices for operators and 205 for advertisers.

While pleased with this progress, Rhodes said there is “more to do” to combat illegal activity. “Our aim is to stop the illegal market from operating at scale in Britain,” he said.

“A significant part of our strategy for doing this is to target our efforts as far afield as possible – at the level of hosts, payment providers, software providers, search engines and others.

We have spent the last two years in particular not only targeting illegal activities, but also building our own resources, skills and capabilities. There is more to do, of course, and this is also true for others in the sector.”

Head of the Gambling Commission calls for more effort from licensees

Furthermore, Rhodes repeated the Gambling Commission’s calls for licensed operators to support the regulator in its efforts.

This week, the regulator issued a warning notice after flagging incidents of licensed games being used by illegal operators. So, once again, he called on licensees to improve their monitoring of business relationships to ensure partners are not facilitating illegal gaming.

“While it is not the role of licensed operators to take action against illegal operators, I strongly encourage everyone to ensure they have carried out due diligence in relation to their own activities and those of any suppliers they rely on,” he said.

“If the Gambling Commission detects illegal activity at any operator – B2C or B2B – we can immediately suspend their license. So, in any case, they face the very real prospect of having their license revoked. This means that anything they are supplying to anyone else in the UK will cease immediately.”

Rhodes sees a bright future for the game in the UK

While concerns about illegal activity remain, Rhodes is optimistic about the regulated market in the UK. He referenced the most recent gross gaming income figures which, published in October, revealed record results.

Profit in Q3 – covering the three months to the end of September – reached £1.32 billion (€1.56 billion/$1.63 billion). This was largely driven by a 16% increase in online slots activity among UK players, with this reaching a record high.