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View from the frontline
The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) CEO Andrew Rhodes has revealed the regulator’s progress in combating illegal online gambling in his keynote address at the International Association of Gaming Regulators (IAGR) Conference in Toronto.
penalties and disincentives for being in the illegal market.”
Rhodes, on Wednesday, stated a dedicated UKGC team has focused on unlicensed offshore operations for over three years with a double-pronged remit: namely to safeguard children and vulnerable people, and to ensure there are “penalties and disincentives for being in the illegal market.”
The exec then revealed the disruptive work the UKGC has engaged in via a collaboration with search engines. Rhodes stated that for the current financial year, the UKGC reported nearly 200,000 URLs to search engines with almost “100,000 or so removed.”
Removing URLs from search results, the CEO said, makes the illegal sites harder to find and slows the shady operators down. In what spells bad news for 1,000 such operators, Rhodes said the UKGC was tracking them to watch how they react to having their URLs removed and “what effect we’re having on their traffic.”
Making life tough for illegals
The Commission chief stated the ultimate goal of the UKGC’s online enforcement was to destabilize illegal gambling “upstream” making the black market sites “harder to find and harder to operate.” Rhodes said even B2B game suppliers were in the UKGC’s crosshairs, with the intention to “choke off the content that goes into the illegal market.”
Rhodes added that the worst offenders are unlicensed Facebook lotteries, but that the Meta firm “has been effective” in removing their URLs.
The CEO also revealed that remote gambling was up 7% in 2023-24 against 2022-23 and up 63% on 2015-16 figures. Online casino games, and slots in particular, said Rhodes, dominate the remote sector with the market valued at £4.4bn ($5.86bn) in 2023-24.
In his keynote address to the IAGR in Toronto, however, Rhodes also introduced the biggest focus of consumer complaints to the UKGC, namely withdrawal times. The CEO said the gambling industry needs to address withdrawal speeds in line with standards set by modern e-commerce.
they expect it to be instantaneous”
“Everything we order now, we know exactly where it is when it’s going to arrive, how long it’s going to be. The name of the person bringing it even. And consumers expect that with everything. So once they ask for a withdrawal of money from a gambling operator, they expect it to be instantaneous.”
Devil’s in the data
The former senior British civil servant drilled down into recent data to report the UKGC recorded “44.2 million withdrawals” from Great Britain-licensed operators between June and September 2024.
Rhodes said while 96.3% of those withdrawals cleared automatically, 3.5% took up to 24 hours, with only 0.1% taking over 48 hours. It’s the latter stat, he said, that the UKGC “is really interested in.”
Rhodes said the 0.1% interests the Commission because the delay could be because of anti-money laundering concerns, “suspicious activity on the account,” identity problems or other reasons.
“That’s where we’re trying to refine our effort” the CEO stated, by focusing on where the major pain point for consumers is coming from.
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