Gambling Commission – the latest
Gambling Commission CEO Andrew Rhodes’ IAGR 2025 speech painted a fascinating picture of where gambling regulation is heading and how much it’s already evolved. From AI-led interactions to cryptocurrency conundrums, his speech conjured up the idea of a regulator grappling with a market that’s changing just a little faster than it’s possible to keep up with.
The Shape of the British gambling market
One of the statistics Rhodes mentioned that stuck out was just how many UK adults gamble – around 48%. If you’re wondering how much that really is, around 33% of us eat our five a day, and 32% of us get the suggested amount of exercise. When gambling is positioned as something of a ‘niche pastime’, it sort of suggests that eating your greens or going for a walk occasionally are alien habits!
Those 48% of us have contributed to a £15.6 billion overall market value with 60% of that coming from the online sphere. Within that? The slots ‘sub-industry’ leads the way, bringing in £4.4 billion on its own.
These stats suggest a booming market – and it is. But also, they serve as a reminder that the UK’s gambling market is a bit of a global bellwether. Tightening our regulations, encouraging shifts in consumer behaviour, or adopting new tech tend to ripple out to newer markets around the world.
AI, hyper-personalisation, and the new face of responsible gambling
Talks of AI often steer towards hyper-personalisation that encourages us to bet more money, or bet more often. However, Rhodes highlighted how AI is also transforming customer interaction in less ‘cynical’ ways.
Operators have long struggled to keep up with increasingly tight responsible gambling policies, but this seems to be an area where generative AI is flourishing. AI can make interactions more consistent, helping to curb problem gambling.
Of course, this could be a double-edged sword and Rhodes warned that serving more relevant content might end up heightening engagement too. Striking a balance between helpful interaction and manipulation is going to be a tightrope to walk for the next decade of rule-makers.
The crypto crisis
Rhodes warned that crypto gambling is accelerating significantly faster than regulators expected. As it stands, the UK has no licensed crypto operators, yet illegal crypto casinos are a different story. The illegal sector is thriving, in part, because more of us hold crypto than ever before. Around 24% of UK adults hold at least one form of crypto and amongst the under-40s, it’s increasingly becoming their primary store of value.
If a generation of people is emerging who might not see fiat currency as the default, Rhodes rightly points out that what once felt ‘five years away’ may now be just one or two. The tone shift was palpable here, from curiosity to urgency.
Criminal cases and the illegal market crackdown
Rhodes often dwells on the black market and this speech was no different. Except this time, there were some shocking statistics to accompany the claims. Over the past two years, the Gambling Commission has seen a 300% increase in criminal cases.
As a result of this, the Commission has evolved (whether it wanted to or not) from a compliance monitor to an active enforcer. With so much gambling now taking place online, that’s exactly where crime has moved to as well. It’s not enough for regulators to have administrative muscle, they need investigative muscle too.
100,000 illegal URLs taken down
As a way of disrupting illegal gambling, Rhodes explained the more aggressive stance the UKGC has taken. They’ve removed more than 100,000 illegal URLs, tracked 1,000 unlicensed operators and worked directly with sites like Facebook to disrupt traffic.
Using this ‘upstream’ strategy – that’s making it harder to find illegal sites rather than just shutting them down, is really smart. It seems the UKGC is learning from anti-piracy tactics. They aren’t trying to ‘arrest the internet’ anymore, but they are making select bits of it invisible.
Fairness, frustration, and the hybrid gambler
Rhodes really has a knack for analogies and his comparison between gambling withdrawals and DHL parcel tracking was spot on. If you can track a watch part from Milan to Manchester in real time, why can’t you track your own money leaving a betting account?
He revealed that 96.3% of withdrawals are processed automatically, with just 0.1% taking longer than 48 hours. This seems an impressive figure on paper, but when you’re dealing with tens of millions of transactions, even 1/10 of 1% represents a lot of impatient people.
It’s a small but telling example of what fairness looks like in 2025. It’s not just about RTPs, odds, or outcomes anymore; it’s about user experience. People now expect online casinos to work as effectively as Amazon checkouts – and why shouldn’t they?
Account restrictions
That theme of frustration cropped up again when Rhodes moved on to account restrictions. Roughly 4.3% of all online accounts were restricted and most of those restrictions were for commercial reasons. Many of those accounts belonged to winning players, with some accounts limited after as few as 5 bets.
It’s not hard to imagine how that looks to a customer who feels they’re being punished for doing well. Rhodes noted the worrying crossover: these frustrated players often crop up again in data from the illegal market. In other words, if regulated operators shut the door, some people are more than happy to slip round the back. It’s a vicious cycle that blurs the lines between the legal and illegal market, in what he called a ‘hybrid’ gambling pattern.
This boomerang effect is a really troubling one. Regulators clamp down to protect consumers, operators limit accounts to protect margins, and somewhere in between, the consumer ends up outside the system entirely.
Data as the future of regulation
If there was one section that really highlighted the UKGC’s recent modernisation, it was the discussion on data. Through its ROCD project (Regular feed of Operator Core Data), the Commission can now monitor aggregated player behaviour almost as it happens.
Riskier behaviours among young people
Among the early findings were some worrying stats about under 25s.
- They are the least likely to set their own deposit limits.
- They are the most likely to hit financial risk triggers and have limits imposed by operators.
- Despite being digital natives, they’re financially less cautious.
While the data doesn’t look great, it’s really helpful when it comes to prevention. Now, instead of waiting for complaints or harm reports, they can spot early risky behaviour and intervene before it spirals.
Financial Risk Assessment pilot
The other worrying statistics came from the Financial Risk Assessment pilot. This used credit-reference data to try and spot consumers in trouble – and it seems it worked. The biggest spenders were:
- 2-4 times more likely to have a debt management plan.
- 2-5 times more likely to have defaulted in the past year.
It’s evidence that high-spending doesn’t correlate with high-rollers, big budgets, or people who can afford it. Instead, many of the biggest bettors are financially strained.
Rhodes was rightfully careful to frame this not as a crusade against heavy gambling. Instead, as a call to help operators prevent players from sliding into distress, because it’s pragmatic. It felt as though this was the data that regulators have been holding their breath for, for some time, and finally, they can prove it.
Final thoughts
Rhodes ended on a welcome note of unity, a gentle plea to regulators everywhere to work together. The challenges, after all, are universal: AI, crypto, fairness, illegal gambling.
He urged everyone at the conference to ‘find one thing you can work on with another regulator this week.’ It might have caught as a little glib, but for me, it summed up the tone of Rhodes’ speech. The UK can no longer pretend to operate in isolation, and neither can anyone else.
Because the truth is, whether you’re in London, Melbourne, or Malta, the problems are now borderless – and the solutions will have to be too.