Euromat says Europe’s illegal online gambling market tripled since 2019 to € 12 billion, now 25% of the sector

A new Euromat-backed study puts Europe’s illegal online gambling market at € 12 billion in net revenue in 2025, up from 2019 levels by a factor of three. For PSPs, acquirers, and banks, the point is not just the size of the black market; it is that the report says crypto has helped build recognizable brands with real market share.

1. According to Jason Frost, president of Euromat, the illegal European market now represents 25% of the online sector and is still growing. The study says the € 12 billion figure is based on 2025 net revenue.
2. The research was commissioned by Euromat, the European voice of land-based gambling entertainment, and carried out by Regulus Partners and Helios, a digital research consultancy focused on gambling web traffic. It took more than 1,000 hours of forensic analysis using a methodology that quantified digital marketing and web traffic against macro data and sociopolitical developments, including the impact of country-specific regulatory interventions.
3. Filip Jelavić mag.iur., owner and project lead at HELIOS, said the study covered 28 European online gambling markets: the EU27, excluding Malta and Luxembourg, plus the United Kingdom, Serbia, and Montenegro. The team used forensic data analysis for Euromat to identify the size, growth trends, characteristics, and main causes behind the black-market expansion.
4. The report argues that illegal online gambling markets do not appear by accident, but emerge when government policy creates friction for consumers. The factors it lists include limited choice due to regulation and state monopolies, low visibility, price or value distortions, and interventionist measures such as affordability checks that block or complicate established consumer behavior.
5. Jelavić also said the strongest black-market operators are now large enough to have built recognizable brands with significant market share, and that the rapid growth of cryptocurrencies has been key to building many of these businesses through product differentiation and regulatory loopholes. The text also says very few European online gambling jurisdictions have established effective barriers against this growth, but the source cuts off before naming them.

For high-risk payment teams, the practical takeaway is simple: this is no longer a fringe traffic problem. The report frames illegal gambling as a scaled distribution and branding problem, with crypto as a major enabler and country-specific regulation as one of the main drivers of consumer migration.