Illegal Betting Sites Set to Spend £1 Billion on Advertising By 2028

The threat of gambling’s black market to the regulated sector in the UK has been highlighted once more in a shocking new research study.

The findings of the marketing intelligence agency World Advertising Research Center (WARC) reveal that illegal betting sites will be spending a combined £1 billion a year on advertising by 2028… significantly exceeding the total outlay of regulated firms.

The gambling tax hike, set to be rolled out for the first time next month, is set to be a key factor behind the drop-off in ad spending of legitimate bookmakers and casinos – but that’s not an issue for black market operators, who don’t pay tax anyway.

The possible introduction of financial risk assessments, which could see big stakes punters forced to prove they can afford their wagering by submitting payslips and bank statements, is just one of the key drivers behind the worrying rise of the illegal market.

Tectonic Shift

The WARC research paper has tracked the spending on advertising of both legal and black market companies in recent years.

They project that the UK gambling industry – both legitimate and illegitimate – will be spending a combined £1.9 billion on ads by October 2026. Of that, £845 million will come from the black market, according to the research, for a year-on-year rise of 32%.

However, a reduction in advertising spending by legal operators in the years ahead – as a result of marketing cutbacks in the wake of the tax rise – will see illegal firms spending more than them by 2028.

Within two years, the black market will be splashing out an estimated £1 billion a year on promotional activity… placing many customers at risk.

These illegal operators often don’t put the same financial protections in place as the legal sector, while inadequate security and anti-fraud processes can leave punters in danger of having their personal data compromised.

And without a formal regulator monitoring their activities, there is no impetus for them to offer higher standards of customer care.

A spokesperson for WARC commented: “Our research has found that there is a two-speed market at play, with almost all growth now being driven by unlicensed firms.

“Most significantly, unlicensed operators are on course to account for more than half of all ad spend within the gambling sector by 2028; a sign of the tectonic shift currently occurring within the market.”

The chief executive of the Betting and Gaming Council, Grainne Hurst, warned that the study should ‘ring alarm bells’ among politicians that signed off on the gambling tax increases.

Cease and Desist

So stark is the problem that Google are now acting to clamp down on paid-for ads taken out by illegal operators in their search engine.

In 2025, Google removed a staggering 270 million ads from its network that promoted black market bookmakers and casinos, with a further ten million ‘policy violations’ incurred by the illegal sector last year alone.

The UK Gambling Commission has also contacted the American tech firm to have illegal operators removed from its search listings. In October 2025, the regulator provided Google with a list of some 339,757 URLs of unlicensed betting sites, with around 287,000 of those deleted from the search engine.

Additionally, the Gambling Commission issued more than 3,000 cease and desist orders to disrupt black market activity.

The regulator has recognised that their job of protecting customers has been made harder by an uptick in VPN usage, with around 40% of punters adopting a private network for their browsing since the roll-out of the Online Safety Act in 2025.