72 per cent of online gambling escapes regulatory oversight 

A study focusing on the European online gambling market estimates that unregulated operators generated €91.6 billion in revenue from consumers across the 27 countries of the European Union in 2025. This figure would represent 72 per cent of a market valued at €128 billion. 

€91.6 billion generated outside national regulatory frameworks 

The figure illustrates the scale of the phenomenon. According to the study carried out by Gaming Compliance International for the Campaign for Fairer Gambling, unregulated online gambling activities accounted for €91.6 billion in gross gaming revenue in 2025 from consumers in the European Union. 

Two years earlier, in 2023, this activity was estimated at €52.6 billion. The study therefore reports a 74 per cent increase over two years. Across the entire European online gambling market, valued at €128 billion, the share attributed to unregulated operators would thus reach 72 per cent. 

According to the report, these activities take place outside the scope of local regulations relating, in particular, to consumer protection, taxation, licensing and regulatory oversight. 

An issue affecting tens of millions of Europeans 

In total, content relating to online gambling is estimated to have reached 121 million people in Europe during 2025. Of these, 88 million are estimated to have been exposed to content linked to unregulated operators. 

The level of exposure appears even higher when the analysis focuses on those who actually interacted with gambling-related content. According to the study, 91 per cent of these consumers are estimated to have encountered content promoting the unregulated sector. 

The issue is not limited to the moment a player arrives on a website and places a bet. It also comes into play much earlier, when they discover a brand, an advert or content likely to steer them towards an operator. 

According to Ismail Vali, chairman of Gaming Compliance International and founder and former managing director of Yield Sec, by the time the consumer finally places their bet, a decisive part of the battle to attract their attention may already have been won or lost. 

“By the time the bet is placed, the battle for the customer may already have been lost.” 

Advertising, apps and payments: an entire ecosystem 

The report does not focus solely on the gambling sites themselves. It describes a much broader range of services that enable these operators to raise their profile, recruit new users, offer their products and receive payments. 

The functioning of the market does not rely solely on several thousand websites operating independently of one another. It is underpinned by a shared digital infrastructure that enables operators to remain accessible and visible. 

This structure complicates the authorities’ response. Taking down a website or blocking an address is not necessarily sufficient if the company in question can continue to reach its audience by other means, change its domain name or rely on the same technical and commercial tools. 

According to Ismail Vali, the very high number of operators should not give the impression that the authorities are faced with thousands of entirely separate problems. 

“Six thousand unregulated operators do not represent six thousand separate problems,” he explains, in essence, in the report. 

His argument rests on the fact that these operators rely on common mechanisms to advertise, find customers, distribute their offerings, transfer money and keep their services accessible. This dependence also constitutes their weak point. 

Why do borders complicate regulation? 

Gambling regulations remain largely organised at national level. Digital operators, their infrastructure and the various services on which they rely can, however, operate across several jurisdictions. This disconnect between a market capable of crossing borders and enforcement mechanisms that are primarily national constitutes, according to the report’s authors, a significant weakness in the European framework. 

Derek Webb, founder of the Campaign for Fairer Gambling, describes this as a “failure to enforce the rules that is taking place in plain sight across Europe”. 

He highlights the figure of €91.6 billion projected for online gambling activities operating outside local regulatory frameworks by 2025. 

Monitoring websites alone would no longer suffice 

A strategy focused exclusively on a single operator, website or digital address risks being insufficient if the operators concerned can quickly relocate their activities. The report argues that the infrastructure enabling these companies to continue operating must also be given particular attention. 

With an estimated €91.6 billion in 2025 compared with €52.6 billion in 2023, the reported growth is considerable. According to the calculations presented in the study, nearly three-quarters of European online gambling revenue is now associated with activities that fall outside national regulatory frameworks.