UK Regulator Updates Its View on Illegal Gambling Trends

The UK Gambling Commission has shared a fresh update on how it tracks illegal gambling and what the latest data may actually show. The regulator said web traffic remains a useful way to spot trends, but warned that no single data source should be treated as the full picture.

After the Spring Evidence Conference in Birmingham, the Commission said activity on illegal gambling sites still moves up and down rather than showing clear growth. Its updated data now covers the period up to February 2026. Based on this, the regulator says there is still no sign of steady long-term growth over the past 21 months.

VPN use is one of the main issues here. The Commission said more people started using VPNs after the UK’s Online Safety Act, which may have hidden some of the real traffic to illegal gambling sites. It had already added 30% to its trend line to account for that, but now says the hidden share may have been even higher after July 2025.

To explore that, the Commission used data from Ofcom and Similarweb. Both showed a jump in VPN use in July 2025, followed by a drop, though levels still remained above where they were before. The regulator said this does not change its wider message: tracking the illegal market is difficult, and the data needs to be handled with care.

The Commission plans to improve its method further and says illegal gambling remains a key priority this year.