British Horseracing Authority Raises Alarm Over Fourteen-Fold Surge in Unlicensed Betting Visits
A fresh study from the IFHA reveals a dramatic expansion in UK black market gambling activity alongside a 34% drop in traffic to regulated platforms.
- Visits to unlicensed betting sites grew fourteen-fold between 2022 and 2025, climbing from 1.8 million to more than 25 million.
- During the first seven months of 2026, unlicensed betting portals recorded 19.4 visits for every 100 directed to regulated alternatives.
- The British Horseracing Authority has called for increased regulatory and government intervention to safeguard racing revenues and consumers.
The British Horseracing Authority has highlighted growing risks to the domestic market following findings from the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities Council on Anti-Illegal Betting and Related Crime, which documented a rapid rise in visits to unlicensed betting operators.
According to the IFHA study, which examined 301 online destinations comprising 74 regulated entities and 227 unlicensed sites, visits to black market platforms expanded fourteen-fold between 2022 and 2025. Traffic surged from 1.8 million visits to more than 25 million visits during that three-year period.
Over the identical timeframe, user visits to domestically licensed betting operators declined by 34%, marking a noticeable shift in consumer engagement towards unregulated options.
Widening Ratio and Deeper Black Market Engagement
Historical figures in the IFHA analysis highlight the speed of this shift. Towards the conclusion of 2021, the market generated just one visit to an illegal gambling site for every 100 visits logged across regulated websites.
By the first seven months of 2026, that metric reached 19.4 visits to unlicensed portals for every 100 directed to authorised services. The shift was also apparent across a subset of 32 unlicensed platforms taking wagers directly on British horseracing, where the visit intensity rose from 0.97 visits per 100 regulated visits in late 2021 to 6.8 visits per 100 in 2026.
User behaviour on black market websites showed deeper engagement between late 2024 and July 2026. The average length of a visit to an unlicensed site climbed 32%, rising from 5 minutes 38 seconds to 7 minutes 25 seconds. Pages viewed per session also increased by 34%, up from 5.19 to 6.98.
Conversely, engagement across licensed alternatives retreated. Average time spent on regulated sites fell from 11 minutes 18 seconds in late 2024 to 9 minutes 57 seconds over the opening seven months of 2026.
Regulatory Actions and Industry Scrutiny
Separate data gathered by the Gambling Commission indicated that 2.5% of British adults who bet online over the prior 12 months visited an illegal gambling portal in the four weeks preceding the survey. That finding stemmed from a total sample size of 14,257 individuals, including 3,569 active online gamblers.
In response to unlicensed competition, the Gambling Commission has disrupted black market infrastructure. Since April 2024, the regulator has delivered more than 3,100 cease-and-desist or disruption notifications, logged the takedown of nearly 288,000 URLs, and escalated over 447,000 URLs to search providers Google and Bing.
Government bodies are running parallel projects. In January 2026, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport introduced the Illegal Gambling Taskforce, a 12-month initiative targeting unlicensed operators and their associated advertising and payment rails. DCMS additionally completed a consultation in September 2026 regarding potential bans on black market sponsorship arrangements. The broader policy landscape is under review by the Gambling Policy Commission, tasked with evaluating whether the Gambling Act 2005 requires statutory replacement.
The data surfaces at a sensitive time for the horseracing sector, led by BHA Chief Executive Brant Dunshea. Commercial pressures include a 5% increase to machine games duty announced by the UK Chancellor during the autumn budget, raising the tax rate to 25%. Prior to the budget, analysts at Regulus Partners warned that horse racing could lose roughly a third of its annual income if machine games duty doubled.
