Published on: August 27, 2025, 08:49h.
Updated on: August 27, 2025, 08:49h.
- The illegal online gambling sector is significantly more lucrative than its legal counterpart.
- Unregulated online gambling sites raked in an estimated $93.5 billion across the EU last year.
The year 2024 proved to be favorable for illegal gambling entities as their offshore casino and sports betting platforms dominated the European online gaming landscape.
The European Casino Association, a group advocating for the licensed gaming industry in the EU, engaged Yield Sec, a market research firm concentrating on online environments, to assess the extent of illegal, unlicensed operations within the online gambling sector. The findings released this week reveal concerning trends.
Researchers at Yield Sec employed both artificial intelligence and human analysis to track the online traffic associated with legitimate and illicit betting sites. Their method involved meta-level and anonymous observation of streaming, betting, and gambling behaviors across jurisdictions, analyzing users’ engagement, duration, and transactions.
Yield Sec estimates that illicit gambling represented 71% of the online gaming revenue in 2024, totaling €80.65 billion ($93.5 billion). This segment of online gambling expanded by 53% compared to 2023, outpacing legal alternatives.
Surge in Illegal Market
In the U.S., legal online gambling encompassing slot machines and table games is restricted to seven states, while online sports betting is governed in 34 areas. In the EU, which comprises 27 nations, online gaming has been an integral aspect of culture for years.
Nonetheless, recent initiatives aimed at curbing gambling-related harms have inadvertently fueled the black market. The COVID-19 pandemic further intensified this issue, as consecutive lockdowns and the closure of physical casinos prompted many individuals to explore online gambling for the first time.
Legal online gaming platforms have been compelled to limit their advertising and cut back on promotions that encourage gambling. This shift has likely benefitted the offshore sector.
This alarming research highlights the genuine threat posed by the expanding, unsafe black market for gambling. Illegal operators lack consumer protections and regulations and fail to contribute any revenue to the public treasury,” stated Grainne Hurst, CEO of the Betting and Gaming Council, in an interview with City AM.
Although the United Kingdom has exited the EU, it is believed that illegal online gambling operations are prospering there as well.
Hurst is urging Exchequer Chancellor Rachel Reeves to reconsider her suggestion to increase the UK’s tax on online gambling revenues from 15% to 21%, arguing that this would likely drive more players towards unregulated platforms.
Growing Unregulated Choices
The Yield Sec report estimates the legal online gambling market in the European Union to be approximately $39 billion, reflecting a 30% increase from the previous year. This figure does not account for revenues from online lotteries.
The tremendous growth exceeding 50% year-over-year for unregulated gambling is attributed not only to legal operators facing competitive disadvantages due to regulatory measures but also to the increasing availability of unregulated gambling options including prediction markets, peer-to-peer wagering exchanges, cryptocurrency gaming platforms, and social sweepstakes.
Yield Sec indicates that there are over 6,200 active illegal online gaming operators targeting audiences within the EU.