The number of players accessing unlicensed black market online casinos tripled during the 2022 FIF World Cup, compared to the year-on-year data of the previous years. Yield Sec reported that 250,000 players accessed black market sites in December alone.
Yield Sec carried out the report on behalf of the Betting and Gaming Council, or BGC, saying that the number of visits to unregulated websites from Great Britain increased by 46% year-on-year in 2022. This came to about 148,000 customers accessing every month.
“This research exposes the dire threat the growing unsafe, unregulated black market poses to punters,” BGC chief executive Michael Dugher said. “These unlicensed sites offer none of the safer gambling tools promoted by our members, they pay no tax and employ no one, they do not contribute a penny to sport or services tackling gambling harm, and they do nothing to protect vulnerable players.
“There has been too much complacency about the threat of the black market. Rather than dismissing the problem, the regulator and the government need to tread extremely carefully and resist blanket, intrusive affordability checks at low levels that push even more punters to these dangerous sites.”
