Deep Descent

What is Deep Descent?

The growth, driven predominantly by remote (online) gambling activities, contrasts with a decline in physical gambling premises, highlighting shifting consumer preferences and market dynamics.

When excluding all reported lottery activity, GGY increased to £13.2 billion, up 4.7% year-on-year.

Remote casino, betting, and bingo activity was the standout channel, generating £8.3 billion in GGY, a 6.9% year-on-year increase and accounting for approximately 63% of the non-lottery industry yield.

What is Deep Descent?

Remote sports betting generated £2.4 billion ($3.2 billion), led by football at £1.2 billion ($1.6 billion) and horseracing at £769.3 million ($1.03 billion).

Despite the increase in remote GGY, new account registrations fell 3% to 32.4 million. There were 25.7 million active accounts at the end of the final reporting quarter.

Funds held in customer accounts also declined sharply. Operators held £886.6 million ($1.19 billion), down 13.9% from the same point a year earlier.

About Deep Descent

A recent Fincord Intelligence report highlighted by the Betting and Gaming Council estimated that illegal online gambling generated around $50 billion in gross revenue globally in 2025. It estimated that around 5,000 operator structures were using more than 15,000 websites and apps.

Other estimates are considerably higher, illustrating how difficult the market is to measure. As an example, separate research from Gaming Compliance International put the value of unregulated online gambling at $5.9 trillion in wagering value in 2025, while estimating that unregulated operators accounted for 78% of global online gaming GGR.

Another report, commisisoned by Euromat, estimates that Europe’s black market has sustained a compound annual growth rate of 18% between 2019 and 2026, and will be worth up to €13 billion by the end of the year.