Illegal Betting Traffic Stays Tenfold Above 2022 Despite UK Enforcement, IFHA Study Finds

An IFHA study dated November 2026 finds illegal betting traffic from UK IP addresses eased this year from its 2025 peak but remains more than ten times its 2022 level, even after the Gambling Commission issued more than 3,100 enforcement notices.

The paper, written by Douglas Robinson for the IFHA's Council on Anti-Illegal Betting and Related Crime, tracks 301 betting websites between August 2021 and July 2026. The British Horseracing Authority (BHA), the sport's regulator in Britain, publicized it on 6 November 2026. For operators, the findings bear on two questions: whether disruption work is shrinking the unlicensed market, and how a higher remote betting tax will interact with it.

What the study found on enforcement and tax

The study's central argument is that enforcement activity is not the same as enforcement success, and that success should be judged by sustained falls in traffic. It cites a UK Gambling Commission page, last updated 12 March 2026, reporting the following since April 2024:

The 2026 dip in illegal traffic could reflect that work, the study says, but it could equally reflect search visibility, domain migration, event timing or ordinary volatility. The data cannot separate those causes.

On tax, the study notes that General Betting Duty on most remote betting is due to rise from 15% to 25% on 1 April 2027, while remote bets on UK horse racing stay at 15%. A wider duty gap raises the cost of licensed operation relative to unlicensed competitors, which pay no UK tax.

Traffic: a fourteenfold rise, then an easing

The sample holds 74 legal and 227 illegal sites, all of which offer horse racing. Figures are annual sums of monthly unique visitors from UK IP addresses, estimated using Similarweb, a web analytics provider. They measure visits, not stakes, spend or accounts.

Between 2022 and 2025, illegal traffic rose fourteenfold while legal traffic fell 34%. Annualized, 2026 comes to 97.5m legal visits and 18.9m illegal visits. That is about 25% below the 2025 illegal peak and still more than ten times 2022.

The ratio tells the same story:

A ratio of 19.4 equates to about 16% of combined visits in 2026. The one-in-five framing, roughly 21%, applies to 2025. Because every site in the sample offers racing, the results do not describe illegal gambling across all products. They also use a different method from the Commission's own measure, covered in Gamingo's report on the Gambling Commission illegal gambling index, which put 2.5% of British online gamblers on illegal sites.

Engagement on illegal sites is rising

Time spent is moving the wrong way for licensed operators. Between October to December 2024 and January to July 2026:

The study says the visit-duration gap has more than halved. Visitors to unlicensed sites are staying longer and viewing more pages, even as the number of visits has eased.

Regulatory backdrop the study sets out

The paper places the traffic data against a run of Gambling Commission and government measures:

The Commission also announced on 7 July 2026 that financial risk assessments will be introduced in stages, starting with the largest operators at £5,000 net deposits in 24 hours. No start date has been set.

The first statutory levy collection, in the second half of 2025, raised just under £120m, compared with £49.5m of voluntary donations to GambleAware in 2023-24. The study itself says that comparison is not like for like. Earlier voluntary giving is covered in Gamingo's piece on GambleAware donations.

The study also cites Commission data showing real-event betting yield down 9% year on year in April to June 2025 and up 1% in the first quarter of 2026, though bet numbers fell 8% and active accounts fell 5%. Online slots yield rose 14% in the second quarter of 2025 and 12% in the first quarter of 2026.

Industry reaction and what to watch

BHA chief executive Brant Dunshea said concerns raised during the Gambling Act Review "are now being realised". The BHA says it will share the findings with government and wants the taskforce on illegal gambling to move faster.

For licensed operators, payment providers and affiliates, three points stand out:

• Measurement: the Commission has acknowledged the difficulty of sizing the unlicensed market, as in its earlier remark that it cannot yet reliably quantify illegal online gambling. Traffic studies fill part of that gap but remain estimates.
• Trajectory: the 2026 easing is real in the study's tables, but the base is far above 2022. Earlier coverage of black market growth in the UK and Netherlands shows the pattern building before 2025.
• Cooperation: disruption of unlicensed sites increasingly depends on cross-border work, such as the European regulators' initiative against illegal online gambling.

The next test is whether illegal traffic keeps falling once the duty increase takes effect in April 2027 and the DCMS advertising consultation produces rules.

Status reviewed on 10 November 2026. Traffic, engagement and enforcement figures come from the IFHA study's tables, with the BHA release supplying the industry response. More regulation news and EMEA coverage.