BGC campaign highlights how easy it is to access gambling black market
This campaign comes at a time when some in the industry fear that lawmakers are underestimating the black market.
Key points:
– The new videos take an unflinching look at how easy the black market is to access
– Recent reports have shown that players don’t always know if a site is legal
– Channelisation concerns, tax hikes and illegal white label casinos are major points of discussion at the moment
The Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) has released a video fronted by Frankie Foster that looks into how easy it is to access black market sites.
The video, titled ‘BGC: The Black Market explained’ emphasises that unregulated and illegal casino websites can be accessed easily through search engines, such as Google, and require no Know Your Customer (KYC) checks.
In the video, Foster uses blatantly false information, yet the operator still accepts his details and his deposit – a familiar story to anyone who has investigated the black market before.
While this may seem dangerous to some, in terms of showing the public how easy it is to access the black market, it also serves a bigger purpose.
In the recent Deal Me Out Black Market Report, only 10 out of 194 respondents could correctly identify regulated operators apart from unregulated ones.
This showed that player education is severely lacking when it comes to the legality of online casinos, with some of them even admitting that if the casino was available online, then they ‘assumed it was legal’ – because why would an illegal website be allowed to exist?
This has not been helped by a rise in white label casinos that allow otherwise banned operators to still offer services in a country through a branded deal, such as Stake.
Although Stake was banned in the UK, a British-facing site from the company existed under another operator’s licence, meaning that the brand still very much had a presence in the country.
Good to know: Around 1.5 million Brits are already using unregulated gambling sites and betting around £4.3bn ($5.87bn) each year on them
However, it is also worth mentioning that the BGC has released this video at a time when many are discussing the proposed tax hikes.
The Treasury announced plans to introduce a single tier of remote gambling taxes, charging every establishment at the same rate as online casinos, which would be 21%.
This has led to the British horseracing scene striking for the first time in history and other business operators calling for action against the tax raid.
Key industry figures are claiming that raising taxes will lead to more customers going to the black market, especially if the unregulated casinos can offer better promotions.
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