UK gambling news round-up January 2026
As 2025 wound down, activity in the British gambling industry continued at full pace. From failures and fines to record-breaking years and charity victories, here’s a round-up of some notable recent gambling industry stories.
Flutter to pay out over social responsibility failures
Flutter Entertainment has agreed to pay a £2 million settlement to the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) over social responsibility failures. The Paddy Power and Betfair operator was found to have made several missteps, according to the UKGC report.
Amongst the failures were internal harm-detection systems that lacked sensitivity, allowing customers to deposit large sums in short periods of time without being manually checked.
One customer staked £20,000 across 300 bets in a single session that lasted for 7 hours and 46 minutes before hitting a loss trigger that eventually resulted in the account being reviewed.
This isn’t Flutter’s first rodeo when it comes to big fines. They were hit with a £490,000 fine in 2023 for advertising to vulnerable players, suggesting ongoing issues with their internal systems or perhaps their workplace culture.
It was reported that Flutter was co-operative and agreed to the settlement. In their report, the UKGC urged operators to “ensure systems to identify and address harm work effectively and at the right time”.
Safer Gambling Week 2025 another record-breaker
The results are in for Safer Gambling Week 2025, and the annual awareness-raising campaign saw a year-on-year increase in the number of social media impressions made. The campaign resulted in over 80 million impressions across social media in the UK and Ireland, an impressive 40% increase on 2024.
Primarily organised by the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC), Safer Gambling Week promotes safer gambling tools and responsible betting through social media and other channels.
Big UK operators including Merkur and Flutter Entertainment ran their own initiatives simultaneously, sharing safer gambling advice and encouraging sensible play.
If previous years are anything to go by, we can expect this substantial uptick in the number of social media impressions to translate into increased use of safer gambling tools, including deposit limits and reality checks.
Year after year, Safer Gambling Week manages to outdo itself, and the campaign has long disproven the cynics who turned their noses up in its early days.
GamCare reports better response speeds
The charity GamCare, which provides a point of contact for those who need help with gambling, also has some good news for us. In its 2025 Annual Review, GamCare revealed that 86% of calls were answered within 30 seconds, a key performance indicator. This is up from 72.7% in 2023-24.
The average wait for treatment also fell to 1.3 days from 2.1 days, and the typical profile of callers changed. GamCare observed reductions in the number of those reporting anxiety, depression and acute financial problems, and satisfaction levels remained high.
GamCare’s funding is soon to be shaken up, with the introduction of the new levy fund. However, with results like these, it shouldn’t be too hard for the charity to make a case for it being good value.
Margot Daly, who sits on GamCare’s chair of trustees, said “Looking ahead to statutory levy implementation, I am confident that GamCare enters this next phase from a position of strength.” GamCare has run the National Gambling Helpline for 25 years, and it can be expected to continue doing so.
Increasing pressure to ban ads
Discussions of a potential total ban on gambling advertisements have been ongoing for some time now. In recent months, these discussions have been fuelled by new statistics coming to light.
Activists including the Coalition to End Gambling Ads (CEGA) have been urging politicians to acknowledge a shift in public opinion.
The new data suggests an increasingly negative public attitude towards gambling ads, with around a third of respondents feeling that gambling marketing had become “much more noticeable” on TV, online and in the sponsorships of sports teams.
Also, almost half of respondents across most areas of the UK said that they’d rather see an empty shop front on their high street than a gambling shop. CEGA maintains that the public feel “bombarded by gambling promotions and under-protected from harms”, despite not objecting to gambling in general.
The data highlights a significant distrust in the UKGC as well as a change in attitudes towards gambling adverts. It seems increasingly likely that the government will have to acknowledge and address these issues, and appears that we may even be moving towards a blanket ban on adverts.
Court date set for ex-MP accused of cheating
A date has been set for the trial of ex-MP Craig Williams, who is accused of cheating by betting on the 2024 General Election. Williams was previously Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s parliamentary private secretary and MP for Montgomeryshire.
There’s set to be a long wait before the trial, which is scheduled to take place in January 2028. Regarding the delay, Judge Tony Baumgartner pointed to the significant backlogs in the UK justice system.
Williams is accused of placing bets using privileged information, as well as sharing this information with others so that they too could place informed bets. There are 15 defendants in total, which will be spread over two trials.
Following a UKGC investigation, the prosecutor pointed out that the “use of the betting markets by placing bets with confidential or inside information is a criminal offence.” Williams has remained quiet on the matter, but 12 of the 15 have indicated that they intend to plead not guilty.
"Too much of a ball ache"
In another politics-related issue, Toby Young (Lord Young of Acton), writing in The Spectator described his experience of facing additional verification processes. Young was attempting to access £50 of winnings from a bet on his beloved Queens Park Rangers because bet365 determined him to be a ‘politically exposed person’ and requested that he complete additional verification requirements.
As a “back-bencher in the House of Lords”, Young was surprised to encounter this additional barrier. Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations state that these additional measures apply to those who are “entrusted with prominent public functions”, and Young feels that this doesn’t describe him.
Other political or politically-adjacent figures have faced similar issues when dealing with financial institutions, including having to provide proof of income evidence for children, or even for deceased spouses.
In his article, Young concluded that he wouldn’t be completing the enhanced verification for privacy reasons, as well as “because it’s too much of a ball ache”. Young’s experience raises the question of how many UK gamblers might be victimised as a result of tangential connections to the government. All this over £50?
Summary
2026 promises to be an eventful year in the industry – much of it fuelled by government and UKGC intervention. Big tax rises looming will impact operator operational models while changes in regulations around stake limits, personal financial assessments and wagering requirements will directly impact players. Everything, however, points to increased activity in the unlicensed sector.