UKGC Referred 7.7 Million Illegal Gambling URLs to Search Engines Between July and September

The United Kingdom Gambling Commission (UKGC) has sharply increased its enforcement against illegal online gambling, referring 7.7 million URLs to search engines in just three months. For PSPs, acquirers, and payment teams touching UK-facing traffic, this is a clear signal that the regulator is not only watching operators, but also the infrastructure around them.

1. Between July and September, the UKGC referred 7.7 million URLs linked to illegal gambling activities to search engines. During the same period, 3,019,291 URLs were taken down and 1,835 websites were submitted to search engines for delisting. That compares with 147,721 URLs referred between April and June, which is the sort of jump that tells you enforcement has moved from routine to industrial.
2. Acting chief executive Sarah Gardner said at the regulator’s CEO Briefing that the Commission had substantially stepped up its enforcement efforts. She linked that expansion to additional government funding, part of GBP 26 million (almost $35 million) in extra funding the UKGC should receive over the next three years.
3. The regulator said it issued 1,005 cease-and-desist notices to advertisers and operators between April and September. That is already higher than the 741 notices issued during the whole of the previous financial year, which matters because the UKGC is clearly widening the net beyond the operators themselves.
4. The UKGC also reported 7,824,932 URLs to search engines in the first six months of 2026-27, of which 3,038,969 were removed. It referred 2,201 websites for delisting in that period, more than twice the 1,068 recorded in the previous financial year. For payment providers, that is a useful reminder that promotional and acquisition funnels around illegal gambling are now part of the enforcement picture.
5. Separately, the regulator said 1,668 websites were taken down or geo-blocked between April and September, already above the 1,134 websites recorded for the whole of 2025-26. The UKGC also published new estimates on consumer engagement with illegal gambling websites through the Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB) and an updated Illegal Gambling Data Dashboard, using questions designed to identify likely engagement even where consumers do not know the sites are illegal.

Sue Young, executive director of operations at the UKGC, said tackling illegal gambling remains a priority for the regulator and its partners. The UKGC says engagement with the illegal market remains relatively low, but it also says a particular group of online gamblers continues to use these platforms, which is the bit payment teams will care about: once a traffic source, affiliate flow, or merchant cluster is identified as part of that ecosystem, the enforcement response can spread quickly.