UKGC bank data suggests unlicensed gambling often adds to licensed play

People who gamble with unlicensed operators do not, on average, cut back on licensed gambling afterwards, according to anonymised bank transaction data analysed by the UK Gambling Commission. The regulator published a technical report on consumer behaviour and harms in the unlicensed market in Great Britain, Focus Gaming News reported.

The details

The study draws on the Commission’s Open Banking dataset, which records payments from the bank accounts of Great Britain residents. Most earlier research on the illegal market relies on web-traffic estimates, surveys and focus groups, the report says.

• Licensed activity: comparing transactions with licensed firms in the months before and after a person was first seen paying an unlicensed operator, the Commission found no notable drop afterwards.
• Harm: people in the dataset were linked to survey scores on the Problem Gambling Severity Index. Among those who used unlicensed operators, the relative sizes of the low-risk, moderate-risk and problem gambling groups were reversed compared with people seen only with licensed firms.

Steven Murphy, a data scientist at the Commission, wrote that this is consistent with its earlier Consumer Voice research, which found illegal gambling is usually supplementary.

Limits

The Commission says some transactions with unlicensed operators may go undetected, and the dataset, though large, is not nationally representative. It calls the project a “powerful proof of concept”.

What’s next

The Commission says it will keep expanding its use of financial transaction data and is open to working with banks and payment providers.