Illegal Gambling Websites Dominating European iGaming Market
Posted on: August 27, 2025, 08:49h.
Last updated on: August 27, 2025, 10:13h.
- Illegal online gambling is a far richer market than the legal one in Europe
- Unregulated gambling websites generated an estimated $93.5 billion in the EU last year
Illegal gambling operators had a good year in 2024, as their offshore casino and sports betting platforms controlled the online gaming market in Europe.
The European Casino Association (ECA), a trade group representing the interests of the legal gaming market in the European Union (EU), commissioned Yield Sec, a market research firm focused on online marketplaces, to investigate how much of the online gambling sector is controlled by illegal, unlicensed operators. The probe, made public this week, revealed worrying findings.
Yield Sec researchers compiled data using AI and human teams to monitor the online traffic of both legal and illegal betting websites. The methodology included meta-level and anonymous surveillance of streaming, betting, and gambling activity within a jurisdiction, with analysis based on users’ “dwell time, activity, and interaction” with such gambling websites and their respective payment wallets and financial processors.
Yield Sec estimates that illegal gambling accounted for 71% of the online gaming revenue in 2024, or €80.65 billion ($93.5 billion). Illegal online gambling grew 53% since 2023, and expanded more than the legal market.
Illegal Market Soars
Legal online gambling with slot machines and table games is limited in the United States to only seven states, though online sports betting is regulated in 34 jurisdictions. In the EU, which includes 27 countries, online gaming has been a part of the culture for many years.
Efforts to reduce instances of gambling harm in recent years are said to have driven the black market. Things were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, with the successive lockdowns and brick-and-mortar casino closures leading many to try their hand for the first time online.
Legal online gaming operators have been ordered to scale back their advertising and reduce promotions designed to induce play. It’s all likely helped the offshore market.
This worrying research underlines the very real threat posed by the growing, unsafe gambling black market. These illegal operators don’t have any [consumer] protections or standards … and don’t return a penny to the Treasury,” Grainne Hurst, CEO of the Betting and Gaming Council, told City AM.
Though the United Kingdom (UK) is no longer part of the EU, it’s thought that illegal online gambling is thriving there, too.
Hurst is urging Exchequer Chancellor Rachel Reeves to rethink her proposal to hike the UK’s tax on online gambling revenue from 15% to 21%. Hurst believes that will only push more players to the black market.
More Unregulated Options
The Yield Sec report estimated that the legal online gambling market in the EU to be around $39 billion. That represented a 30% gain on the prior year. The figure does not include online lottery revenue.
Unregulated gambling’s more than 50% year-over-year growth wasn’t only due to legal operators being put at a competitive disadvantage due to regulations. The Yield Sec study said there are more unregulated gambling options than ever, with the emergence of prediction markets, peer-to-peer wagering exchanges, cryptobased gaming platforms, and social sweepstakes.
Yield Sec estimates that more than 6,200 active illegal online gaming operators are targeting EU audiences.
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