Unlicensed Firms Set to Overtake Licensed Operators in UK Gambling Ad Spend
Unlicensed gambling operators are on course to spend more on advertising to UK consumers than licensed firms by 2028, according to independent research by WARC published on April 21, 2026.
The marketing intelligence firm found that almost all growth in UK gambling advertising is now driven by companies that hold no Gambling Commission licence, even as regulated operators cut their own budgets.
A Two-Speed Advertising Market
WARC put total UK gambling advertising spend on track to reach £1.9 billion in the year to September 2026, a rise of 5.4%.
That marks a sixth straight year of growth but sits well below the 9.4% forecast for the wider UK advertising market.
Behind the headline number is what WARC called a two-speed market, in which spending by licensed online casino and betting brands is falling while unlicensed rivals accelerate.
Licensed Spend Falls As Unlicensed Rivals Surge
Spend by regulated firms is forecast to fall 9.2%, or £107m, to about £1.05bn this year, with reductions across television, radio, video, social and search as new taxes squeeze margins.
Unlicensed operators, by contrast, are projected to lift spend 32% to £845m, then a further 10.6% to £934m the following year, passing £1bn by 2028. WARC said most of that money flows online, where promotion by these firms has more than doubled in three years.
The shift in market share is stark. Regulated operators accounted for 83.8% of UK gambling ad spend during the pandemic.
That share has since fallen to 52.3% and is projected to drop below half by October 2028. Search is the single largest channel at 37.1% of spend (£703m), while online display is the biggest display format at 44.1% (£525m), having overtaken television.
Licensed betting sites are among those pulling back hardest.
Sponsorship And Real-Terms Divergence
In real terms, indexed to 2019/20, WARC expects regulated spend to fall 11.7% to £795m this year while unlicensed spend rises 28.4%. By 2026/27 it forecasts unlicensed investment at 3.7 times its pandemic level, with regulated spend down more than a fifth.
Sponsorship follows the same path. Unlicensed firms account for all growth in gambling sponsorship this year and next and are set to hold more than half of it by October 2027.
The full findings are set out in WARC's report, The Ad Spend Disconnect, commissioned by the Betting and Gaming Council.
BGC Warns Westminster
The BGC, which commissioned the study, framed the numbers as a warning to government as MPs prepared to debate gambling advertising. “This should ring alarm bells in Westminster,” said chief executive Grainne Hurst. “Targeting licensed operators when their advertising spend is already falling will not reduce overall advertising, it will simply bolster the harmful illegal black market which is aggressively targeting UK customers.”
The trade body argued that pressure on the licensed sector is only growing, warning that squeezing regulated firms hands ground to operators outside the rules.
Those pressures include the financial risk assessments being piloted by the Gambling Commission and the rise in remote gaming duty to 40% from 21% in April 2026, which the BGC says could drive customers towards the black market.
Google Blocks Millions Of Gambling Ads
There is separate evidence that unlicensed advertising is already widespread online.
Google's 2025 Ads Safety Report recorded more than 270.7 million gambling and games ads blocked or removed last year and a further 123.9 million restricted, the third-largest restricted category after legal requirements and financial services.
Google also actioned 9.7 million web pages for online gambling policy breaches.
How WARC Defines The Market
WARC defines regulated firms as those licensed and monitored by the Gambling Commission and unregulated firms as companies advertising to UK consumers without that licence, drawing on Nielsen Ad Intel monitoring, net estimates from industry bodies and its own web scraping.
Its figures exclude lotteries. Whether Parliament chooses to focus on the volume of gambling advertising or on who is behind it will shape how far the balance keeps tilting towards the unlicensed market through 2028.
