BGC wants payment blocks, tougher enforcement and ad crackdowns as UK black-market gambling could top £33 billion by 2028

The Betting and Gaming Council (BGC), which says it represents up to 90% of the UK’s legal market, has set out a five-point plan to slow the shift toward offshore and unlicensed gambling. For PSPs, acquirers and banks, the important part is not the headline number alone: BGC is explicitly asking for payment systems to be pulled into enforcement.

1. Independent estimates from H2 Gambling Capital put black-market gambling stakes at £17 billion in 2025, rising to more than £33 billion by 2028. BGC framed its plan as a response to that growth, arguing the current setup is letting illegal operators scale faster than enforcement can contain them.
2. The first point is a crackdown on illegal gambling advertising. BGC wants social media companies to be responsible for removing unlawful gambling-related content and ads, which matters because ad distribution is one of the easiest ways for offshore operators to keep acquiring traffic after losing mainstream access.
3. BGC also wants the regulator to get broader powers to block illegal gambling websites, remove unlicensed gambling apps and disrupt criminal operators. In practice, that means more direct intervention against the channels that keep unlicensed brands reachable after standard site takedowns.
4. The payment piece is the sharpest edge of the proposal: BGC wants payment systems required to block transactions linked to illegal gambling operators. For high-risk PSPs, that is the part to watch, because once the policy language shifts from “monitor” to “block,” merchants, MID controls and transaction screening get pulled into enforcement faster than marketing teams tend to expect.
5. Finally, BGC wants substantial penalties for companies that knowingly provide advertising services, payment processing, hosting or other services to illegal gambling businesses, alongside tough criminal sanctions for people who run, support or profit from those operations. That would put commercial counterparties closer to the regulatory blast radius, not just the operators themselves.

The practical takeaway is straightforward: if this direction gains traction, payments will be treated less as a neutral utility and more as part of the enforcement stack. That changes the risk conversation for acquirers, processors and banks working with gambling exposure in the UK.