UK Gambling Commission Study Tracks Illegal Betting Transactions Across Banking Data

Researchers at the UK Gambling Commission examined millions of banking records to identify how illegal gambling sites operate alongside licensed platforms and the associated behaviors among users. The analysis covered 157.2 million transactions from around 38,000 individuals between July 2018 and July 2026, which allowed the team to flag 3,426 suspected illegal transactions and compare outcomes between groups.

Study Design and Data Sources

The project relied on open banking and payment data that the commission accessed through regulated channels, and it focused on patterns that pointed to unlicensed operators rather than on individual accounts. Analysts applied screening criteria to separate repeat users of illegal sites from those who stayed within the licensed market, and they cross-checked results against the Problem Gambling Severity Index scores that participants had provided in related surveys.

Key Statistical Outcomes

Figures from teh dataset show that 45 percent of individuals who used illegal sites scored 8 or higher on the PGSI, compared with 6 percent among customers who used only licensed operators. That difference translates to more than seven times the rate of problem gambling indicators in the illegal-site group. At the same time, 91 percent of people who returned to illegal sites multiple times also maintained accounts with licensed platforms, which indicates that many participants moved between the two environments rather than operating exclusively outside the regulated sector.

Observers note that the overlap between legal and illegal gambling activity appeared consistently across the sample, and the commission released the full set of findings in early November 2026 after completing the multi-year review. The scale of the transaction pool gave analysts enough volume to detect smaller subgroups, such as those who engaged with illegal sites on a recurring basis, while still maintaining statistical reliability for the main comparisons.

Transaction Patterns Identified

Payment flows that matched known characteristics of unlicensed operators triggered the flags in the 3,426 cases, and the study recorded how often these flows recurred for the same individuals over the eight-year window. Researchers mapped the timing of deposits and withdrawals against public lists of licensed entities to confirm which transactions fell outside the regulated market, and they tracked whether users who started with illegal sites later shifted activity or maintained parallel accounts.

Data indicates that repeat engagement with illegal sites correlated with elevated PGSI scores even when those same users continued to place bets through licensed channels. The commission presented these results without attributing causation, instead highlighting the observed association between the two variables across the sampled population.

Context Within Regulatory Monitoring

The UK Gambling Commission has used payment data in previous monitoring exercises, yet this project marked one of the largest single analyses of its kind because it combined open-banking records with PGSI responses from the same individuals. Staff processed the information in stages, first isolating illegal-site indicators, then matching those records to survey scores, and finally calculating prevalence rates for the different user cohorts. The resulting percentages provide regulators with a quantitative snapshot of how illegal gambling intersects with problem-gambling markers during the study period.

Conclusion

The November 2026 release supplies regulators and researchers with a detailed view of transaction-level activity that spans nearly a decade and connects illegal-site usage to higher rates of elevated PGSI scores. The documented overlap, in which most repeat illegal-site users also operate on licensed platforms, offers a measurable reference point for future monitoring efforts that rely on similar banking datasets.