UKGC Finds 586 Illegal Gambling Sites as Engagement Falls 11%

A new dashboard published on November 5 also shows a 38% quarterly increase in the number of websites targeted for disruption. The results of those latest interventions, however, are still unknown.

September’s Search Count

The Commission’s Illegal Gambling Data Dashboard brings website discovery, search visibility and enforcement activity together. Its September figures include:

• 586 illegal gambling websites identified as accessible to British consumers, up 4% from September 2025 but down 4% against the previous three-month average;
• 97 affiliate webpages linking to illegal gambling operators, 26% below the preceding three-month average;
• 4% of monitored gambling-related Google search results leading to illegal operators, up 0.5 percentage points against the preceding three-month average.

The 586 figure comes from targeted searches and subsequent checks of website domains. It is a count of sites the Commission identified through that process, rather than an inventory of every illegal operator serving Britain.

Affiliate pages are counted separately, even when several belong to the same domain. The Google visibility measure covers selected queries, including generic casino and betting searches. Rankings outside that sample may look different.

More Sites, Less Time Spent

September’s estimated engagement was 11% below the level recorded a year earlier, despite running 12% above the previous three-month average. The search numbers were down as well. Queries such as "not on GamStop" lost 22% of their estimated volume compared with September 2025. Against the recent three-month average, the fall was 53%.

Neither figure gives a headcount of illegal gamblers. UKGC’s engagement calculations use Similarweb traffic estimates, with an allowance for VPN use. The September data nevertheless raises a question: how much does the number of discovered domains tell us about the size of the audience?

A Bigger List of Targets

The Commission’s latest disruption figures cover July to September. It targeted 311 websites during those three months, 38% more than in April-June. There is no comparable traffic assessment for that newer group yet.

For the April-June targets, 77% of sites with enough follow-up data had lost estimated traffic. Taken together, the websites assessed recorded an 18% reduction. UKGC has not established how much of that decline was caused by its interventions.

The delay is part of the measurement process. As data scientist Tom Smith wrote on November 5, the Commission follows traffic for three months after taking action. That leaves the latest 38% increase in disruption targets without a measured traffic outcome for now.