Gambling Commission removed 266,667 URLs in 2025/26, Gardner says

The Gambling Commission reported 397,527 URLs to search engines and saw 266,667 removed in the year to March 2026, interim chief executive Sarah Gardner said at the IAGR conference in Lima on 20 October. Gardner also said the regulator approves no products or suppliers, contradicting providers that present their systems as approved by the Commission.

In the same 2025/26 financial year, before the new funding, the regulator sent 741 warnings to advertisers and operators, reported 1,068 sites for deindexing and closed or geoblocked 1,134. Gardner said the first £7m tranche of a £26m three-year government allocation, available from April, is being used to increase resources and activity, with the aim of making large-scale illegal gambling in Great Britain as difficult as possible. She said the Commission will soon be able to ask a court to suspend IP addresses and domain names.

Gardner described the conduct of B2B service providers that work for both licensed sites and illegal operators as unacceptable. She asked social media platforms for more effort while acknowledging some progress, and said the same applies to advertising and affiliates, which often promote legal and illegal operators together. She also cited anti-money laundering shortcomings found in checks this year.

On the British market, Gardner said gross gambling revenue rose to £17.5bn (+4.4%) in the year to March 2026, or £13.2bn (+4.7%) excluding lotteries, with remote gambling reaching £8.3bn (+6.9%). According to the Gambling Survey for Great Britain, 47% of adults gambled in the four weeks before the survey, falling to 27% when those who only take part in lotteries are excluded, with levels stable over time. She referred to tax changes made in the government's November budget, largely in force from April, whose impact she said it is still too early to assess, and to the new government's announcement that it will examine how gambling operates in local communities.

The Commission introduced financial risk assessments (FRA) in July under the Gambling Act review, giving operators access to limited credit reference agency data. The checks do not affect a customer's credit standing and the data cannot be used for commercial purposes. At full operation they will cover fewer than 3% of accounts, those with the highest spending, with additional requests to the customer in only 0.1% of cases. The trial found these players were two to four times more likely to have a debt management plan than the general population, and two to five times more likely to have been insolvent in the last 12 months. The full response to the consultation will be published in autumn.

Gardner defended the GSGB against criticism. According to the 2025 report, 2.4% of adults scored 8 or above on the Problem Gambling Severity Index, down from 2.7% in 2024. Ruth Evans has taken office as Commission chair, Sarah Fox has assumed most of Tim Miller's responsibilities, and the selection of Andrew Rhodes's successor as chief executive is under way.