Gambling has been a form of entertainment for many years. People all over the world enjoy numerous casino games or sports betting options, whether to relax, socialise, or train skills like attention to detail or mathematics.
The current gambling scene
Nowadays, there are numerous casino options for players. The most famous options include online casinos and betting platforms, where customers can play card games, roulette, dice games like craps, or slots and place different bets.
There are also thousands of brick-and-mortar casinos, some representing famous historical places.
For example, Casino de Monte Carlo in Monaco is not only an attraction for casino lovers but also for those passionate about history and architecture. Las Vegas, Nevada, US, is another incredible place for people who enjoy casinos and nightlife, as the city has become an emblem of the gambling world.
What do casinos offer?
Casinos, both land-based and online, have a varied catalogue of options when it comes to their services. Fans of card games can play poker, baccarat, or blackjack, and they can also play new and improved variants of these classic games, like Texas Hold’Em, Spanish 21, European Blackjack, Seven Card Stud, or Punto Banco.
Besides card games, plenty of other games attract players from all over the world. Roulette is now a symbol of the casino world, featured in numerous forms of art, from movies and music videos to video games.
Slots are also popular in casinos. They have the advantage of being very easy to play and offering multiple options to players. Slots can feature countless themes, from Ancient Egypt to movie-inspired visuals.
Gambling although compelling, no matter the game of choice, can turn unsafe quickly if it doesn’t take place in a regulated environment.
Legalised casinos in the UK
In many countries in the world, including a big part of Europe, gambling activities are legal.
Legal gambling doesn’t mean that anyone can organise such games or that these activities can take place anywhere. Legal gambling means a regulated environment for such businesses to operate, ensuring customers’ safety and complying with national and local rules.
In the UK, gambling is regulated, and the UK’s Gambling Commission, or the UKGC, acts as the control authority for such activities. Unfortunately, the existence of the authority does not entirely eliminate the possibility of unregulated and illegal gambling.
Even if the legal framework for gambling in the UK tries to combat unregulated casinos and the UKGC takes action to fight illegal gambling, a big part of the mission relies on raising awareness of the dangers that come with the choice of illegal gambling.
The danger unregulated casinos pose
When clients choose an unregulated or unlicensed casino, they no longer have the guarantee of fair games, data protection, and anti-fraud systems well put in place. What’s more, many unregulated casinos and illegal gambling platforms can serve as a front for other illegal activities such as money laundering or human trafficking.
Even if illegal gambling and unregulated casinos might seem like isolated cases that rarely happen, that’s not the case. A report issued by KingCasinoBonus, a service provider for legitimate casino comparisons, showed that each month, approximately 1000 British players create accounts on unregulated platforms. The same report expects this number to almost double by the end of 2025, reaching 2000 new accounts on unregulated online casinos per month.
UKGC on illegal gambling
The CEO of the UK Gambling Commission, Andrew Rhodes, declared that the commission is addressing not only the problem of illegal gambling but also the problem of illicit practices within the regulated system:
“The illegal market will always continue to evolve and is difficult to eliminate, so our efforts will increasingly be further upstream to seek to disrupt these illegal sites as much as possible, but we cannot see this as being about the lowest common denominator.
We cannot reasonably argue that some practices should continue because illegal gambling is worse. We cannot condone bad practice in the legitimate market and I think you would all agree with me on that. I think the risks from the so-called black market are overstated, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think they exist.”
Cooperation in the gambling industry is essential
He also highlighted the importance of international cooperation in fighting illegal gambling, as well as the importance of multiple jurisdictions’ regulators:
“A key focus of our increasing interaction with those international regulators has been in building a combined effort to tackle illegal gambling sites.
Clearly between the regulators there is a difference between illegal gambling sites that face into a jurisdiction where they must have a licence and operators who have customers in countries where the operator cannot seek a licence.
Hence this is why I refer to illegal gambling sites as opposed to saying black market as these can mean quite different things.”
