UKGC keeps pressure on illegal gambling by blocking 7.7m URLs in July-September

• UKGC has gone after 7.7m illegal gambling URLs in July-September 2026
• The regulator has been tracking and identifying instances of URLs that target British customers with unregulated gambling offers
• The UKGC is additionally working on better understanding consumer behavior in relation to unlicensed gambling

The Gambling Commission in the United Kingdom, the country’s gambling watchdog, has stepped up efforts to clamp down on the illegal gambling sector.

Flagging and removing illegal gambling URLs: step one in the Gambling Commission's new strategy

Part of these efforts has resulted in the ongoing monitoring, identification, and removal of illegal gambling URLs from search engines in a bid to shield consumers in the country from the potentially pernicious influence of unregulated gaming.

In a statement detailing the latest actions taken between July and September 2026, the UKGC has flagged and referred 7.7m URLs to search engines, resulting in the removal of 3,019,291 URLs in the end, with 1,835 websites flagged for full delisting.

This is a major step-up in the UKGC’s ability to identify what it considers to be illegal URLs, with the previous period between April and Juneonly detecting 147,721 URLs.

The scale of the enforcement action is a double-edged sword, as it clearly demonstrates the ability of the regulator to go after illegal URLs - or at least detect them - and how many of those there are in the first place.

The black market poses an ongoing challenge to the regulated industry, and amid tightening of regulatory and taxation rules for licensed operators, there have been growing calls to do more and limit the black market.

In a statement, UKGC acting CEO Sarah Gardner spoke about the regulator’s commitment to protecting consumers by stepping up its enforcement activity, with 1,005 cease-and-desist notices issued between April and September.

Illegal gambling has been an important part of the UKGC’s strategy of making the market both more competitive and more secure for consumers. The regulator introduced the Illegal Gambling Index at the beginning of November, as Phase 4 of the regulator’s Consumer Voice research series, looking to find out how consumers understand illegal online gambling.

Regulator focuses on understanding how players interact, characterize illegal gambling

The regulator suggested that only 1% of respondents were engaging with illegal gambling in the 12 months before publication, while the number increased to 4% for those who gambled online specifically.

"Understanding these trends is particularly important, as they can tell us more about how the illegal market is evolving than any single metric at a given point in time. We'll also continue to compare GSGB findings with other sources of evidence, such as web traffic estimates and other intelligence sources, to strengthen our understanding," the UKGC explained in detailing the latest findings.

This, paired with the ongoing push against the illegal gambling market through the identification of URLs, is part of the regulator’s broader strategy to address

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