Unregulated gambling valued at $5.9 trillion, new report warns

• Gaming Compliance International released a new white paper focusing on the gambling industry, highlighting the growing position of unregulated online gambling
• The report uncovered that a new sector has emerged within the gambling marketplace – unacknowledged gambling
• In 2025, unregulated gambling has reached $5.9 trillion in global wagering value, the report reveals

A new analysis of the global gambling industry highlights a concerning trend, identifying the illegal gambling vertical as the third-largest economy in the world.

The unacknowledged gambling market subsector rises

Gaming Compliance International (GCI), the global gaming compliance, advertising and media content monitoring and black-market mitigation services company, provides a range of insights into the global online gambling sector in its newest analysis, GCI Online Gaming 2025: Global.

The comprehensive report identifies that while there is a single global gambling marketplace, it is separated into three distinct sectors.

Those sectors include the regulated, licensed and compliant market, the unregulated, unlicensed gambling sector that is actively targeting consumers and processing transactions and the unacknowledged market, a new, fast-growing sector that offers gambling-like products that fall outside of the traditional classification for gambling.

According to GCI, the emergence of a third sector, the unacknowledged gambling vertical, marks a "fundamental shift defining online marketplaces from 2025 onwards, reshaping how consumers engage with betting and gaming," as explained in a press release.

The experts highlighted that each sector is competing for the same audience, attention and player spend.

Ismail Vali, GCI’s President, commented: "What we are now seeing is a three-sector gaming marketplace in every jurisdiction — regulated, unregulated, and unacknowledged — and it is this third layer that is accelerating consumer confusion, unregulated growth, and regulatory complexity at scale."

Vali outlined that while there are three distinct sectors within the global gambling industry, audiences do not distinguish them.

"They experience one marketplace, where everything is accessible and everything competes equally. In a world where you can bet on anything, consumers are increasingly betting on everything — this is the gamification of everything," the executive added.

The unregulated gambling sector dominates the marketplace

Besides the emergence of the unacknowledged gambling sector, GCI’s report acknowledged the exponential growth of the unregulated online gambling vertical.

Per the new report, the unregulated online gambling industry has reached a staggering $5.9 trillion in global wagering value in 2025.

This, the company said, makes the unregulated gambling sector the third-largest economy, behind the United States and China.

The described issue, GCI explained, is often referred to as the "trillion dollar problem."

At the same time, the new report outlines that the "average online gaming marketplace is structurally unbalanced," with 78% of the action taking place via unregulated operators, leaving only 22% for the regulated gambling vertical.

"This reflects the global Gross Gaming Revenue (GGR) market share split, demonstrating that the majority of consumer-generated revenue is flowing outside licensed, taxed, and controlled environments. This is not a marginal issue — the unregulated sector dominates the marketplace," reads the report.

Matt Holt, GCI’s CEO, explained that the trillion-dollar wagering value of the unregulated online gambling industry makes it one of the largest economic systems in the world.

He warned that this sector operates mostly outside of licensing and regulations. This, Holt said, makes the issue for regulators not marginal but dominant.

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