The £123 Billion Question: Can Betting Shop Regulation Keep Up?

With the global online gambling market projected to reach $156 billion (£123 billion) by 2030, the UK’s chief regulator has admitted a startling reality: it cannot effectively oversee every betting shop across the country. This admission has raised pressing concerns over the adequacy of current retail gambling regulation.

Speaking at the Peers for Gambling Reform Summit on September 3, UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) Executive Director Tim Miller acknowledged the limitations:

“As a relatively small regulator headquartered in Birmingham, the Commission cannot directly police every single gambling venue in the UK.”

A Shared Regulatory Burden

The UK’s regulatory framework, shaped by the 2005 Gambling Act, gives the UKGC responsibility for licensing, compliance, and enforcement nationwide. Local councils, however, oversee venue licensing and on-site inspections, making them a key part of the retail oversight structure.

Miller stressed that license fees collected by local authorities must be used solely for regulatory activities, including compliance visits. Yet official figures for 2023–24 show Britain had 5,931 betting shops—down 22.5% from 7,655 in 2019–20. Despite collecting license fees, fewer than half of local licensing authorities carried out venue inspections.

Meanwhile, the Commission has focused its resources on illegal operators. Since April 2025, the UKGC has issued 344 cease-and-desist notices, reported 45,674 illegal gambling URLs to search engines (with 30,605 removed), and disrupted 235 unlawful sites.

Regulation Falling Behind Market Growth

The mismatch between oversight and market growth is widening. European markets are rapidly expanding. Spain’s regulated gambling market generated €8.1 billion GGR in 2024, while Brazil’s newly regulated sector delivered $3.4 billion in 2023 and is forecast to more than double to $7.02 billion in 2025.

By contrast, weak retail supervision in countries like Sweden has exposed structural flaws. A 2024 audit found serious gaps in compliance checks, risk-based planning, and enforcement. In the UK, similar gaps risk undermining safer gambling measures, AML safeguards, and self-exclusion programs.

A BBC File on 4 investigation in June 2025 revealed that 13 out of 14 adult gaming centers failed to enforce self-exclusion rules—allowing vulnerable individuals to gamble despite being barred.

Why the System Stalls

Miller made it clear the UKGC will not shift its core priorities:

“We must remain focused on the statutory duties Parliament has set out for us.”

Local councils, however, face budget cuts, competing responsibilities, and staff shortages. This has hollowed out one of the system’s key pillars: on-the-ground enforcement.

By comparison, markets like Malta and Gibraltar centralize licensing and compliance under one authority, enabling closer coordination between licensing, compliance inspections, and enforcement—something the UK’s divided model lacks.

Political and Industry Pressure Mounts

The enforcement gap has not gone unnoticed in Westminster. Labour MP Dawn Butler has called for local councils to be given greater enforcement powers, tying license fee revenues directly to inspection performance. Labour leader Keir Starmer has pledged to expand local authority powers across multiple sectors, raising the prospect of stricter and more frequent inspections for gambling venues.

Industry leaders, including Entain and Flutter, have previously urged the government to set clearer inspection standards to ensure a level playing field in the retail market.

Closing the Gap

To safeguard integrity in the UK’s retail gambling market, several measures are being discussed:

• Ring-fencing venue license fees to guarantee funding for compliance inspections.
• Regional inspection hubs to provide specialist teams that report directly to the UKGC.
• AI-powered compliance tools like SEON and Mindway AI to detect early risk indicators, AML red flags, and problem gambling behaviors in real time.