The latest data from the Gambling Commission shows that the UK online market is experiencing growth in terms of player activity as gross gambling yield (GGY) from October to December 2024 was up 21% year-on-year to £1.54 billion.

Both online monthly active accounts and total bet and/or spins rose during that period. Total bets and/or spins hit a record of 25.9 billion during the quarter, up 8% year-on-year, while accounts grew by 3%.

Online slots GGY was up 15% to £709 million in the same period, while spins were up 9% to 23.9 billion. Average monthly active accounts were up by 10% to 4.4 million.

Despite this growth, the UK has faced a tough period of gambling reforms relating to the previous government’s Gambling Act review in 2023.

Melanie Ellis, partner at Northridge law firm, tells iGB while the industry has had to deal with some negative public sentiment, aided by negative news coverage, gambling is still an activity that is enjoyed by a large proportion of the population.

And there is still plenty of interest in the market from and operator perspective. “We are still seeing a steady flow of operators wishing to obtain Gambling Commission licences to enter the UK market, including both existing operators in other jurisdictions and start-ups,” Ellis says.

“As the Gambling Act review reforms progress, the increasing certainty about the regulatory environment is certainly helping.”

What are the UK’s main challenges?

Despite a growing online betting landscape for operators, the matured UK market holds risk for the industry. H2 Gambling Capital managing director Ed Birkin tells iGB that the UK has two headwinds impacting its growth.

The first is the nature of the UK market and its level of maturity. It is going to have lower growth levels than those seen in developing markets, given its established position. The second issue is increasing regulations such as financial risk checks, maximum stake limits for slots and potential advertising restrictions.

Earlier this month, the Gambling Commission completed the first stage of its financial checks pilot. The risk check trial began in August and placed additional checks on bettors that hit a net monthly deposit of £500 while betting with a handful of top tier operators. The second phase of this programme will launch on 28 February, when a lower net deposit of £150 a month is hit.

The Commission insists the system is not an “affordability check” but rather a proposed method to help “identify high-spending remote gambling customers”.

Northridge’s Ellis says employing sufficient compliance personnel to monitor customer activity and carry out these interactions has been an increasing cost for operators. And smaller operators operating on tight margins are most at risk of not being able to absorb these costs.

“The upcoming statutory levy, which will no longer exempt smaller operators [from allocating a percentage of profit to funding research and treatment for problem gambling], is also likely to have a significant impact on these operators. However, I hope that the ability to innovate with new product types and marketing strategies will help them weather the storm.” adds Ellis.

How are operators doing?

Instances of online gambling are clearly rising in the UK, however, with increasing regulation and earning barriers that may not translate into viable margins.

Last year, Flutter consolidated its international business into five regions: the UK & Ireland, Asia-Pacific, Southern Europe & Africa, Central & Eastern Europe and Brazil. The restructure saw former PokerStars’ CEO Kevin Harrington take the helm at Flutter UK&I.

The move to absorb its UK&I business prompted questions around whether this meant the operator was shifting some of its focus away from the market. But Dan Waugh, partner at advisory firm Regulus Partners believes most of Flutter’s UK business should be shielded from increasing regulations.

“Flutter’s advantage is that it has a very diversified, recreational player base,” Waugh tells iGB.

“There are professional and high value players on Betfair, but the SkyBet and Paddy Power brands have always been directed towards the lower spending recreational players, and therefore they should be less affected by affordability rules,” adds Waugh.

A return to growth?

Q3 earnings in 2024 showed operators have experienced an uptick in activity on the previous year, although this period in the UK was boosted by the UEFA Euro 2024 tournament and 2025 Olympics.

For the three months ended September 30, Flutter’s UK&I segment reported a revenue of £846 million, up 18% year-on-year. The division’s EBITDA for the period was also up by 29% to £237 million. Entain Group also recorded an uplift in UK&I revenue in its third quarter results of 6%.

It’s clear the UK’s tier one operators are in a period of restructuring their operations to mitigate the costs from increased regulations. Last year both Entain and Evoke invested heavily in improving product and marketing efforts to help return to growth in UK after both experiencing periods of stagnant revenues.

In March last year, Evoke’s CFO noted that its UK business was experiencing “regulatory headwinds” and an online trend that saw “the player mix shift to lower-spending customers”, due to additional safer gambling measures.

Evoke’s UK&I online revenue grew by a modest 3% to £162.4 million for the three months ended 30 September. While online gaming revenue was up 12% to £115.2 million, sports betting dipped 13% to £47.1 million.

Making changes

During the group’s half-year results in August, Evoke CEO Per Widerström discussed structural changes in its marketing and product departments, as well as a lean into an operational model driven by data and automation.

“A very important part of the structure change as well is what we do on a customer value proposition. We are seeing a step change now when it comes to the consistency,” Widerström said.

“If we take now William Hill here in UK, we are consistent in our messaging in terms of the proposition, a pricing perspective, as well as from a product perspective. And here, we are absolutely focused on the mid and high-value players.”

Is the UK online market still a priority for international operators?

Speaking to iGB, Evoke’s chief strategy officer Vaughan Lewis says the UK remains a key market for the company as it is one of five core markets that make up around 90% of group’s revenue.

“Across our online business, we recently started rolling out new and exciting products to create an even greater customer experience across our brands. This includes launching our popular BetBuilder product and an all-new customer engagement platform,” he says.

“Investments like these are being supported by our continued focus on intelligent automation to make sure we deliver the right content at the right time for players, all while ensuring responsible gambling remains at the core of our operations.”

Meanwhile tier two and three operators, such as Kindred Group, have reported that the implementation of additional affordability measures in the UK has “dampened performance” in the market.

In its full year 2024 results, Kindred Group CEO Nils Andén noted the company sees a risk of lower channelisation within the UK market. However, Andén wrote that Kindred “remains very confident” about the UK’s long-term contribution to the group.

Increasing regulations and black market threat

Although regulatory requirements have increased in recent years, operators have risen to the challenge. This is demonstrated by a “notable reduction in regulatory fines and settlements with the Gambling Commission in 2024 compared to 2023,” Northridge’s Ellis says.

However, Ellis adds that “competition from unlicensed operators will likely be an increasing issue, particularly with new stake limits for online slots games expected to come into force in the next few months.”

At ICE in 2023, Gambling Commission executive director Tim Miller hit back at concerns that increasing regulation would open the door for black market operators as customers are driven to less restricted betting sites.

“We will never accept the argument that because an illegal online option exists, this should mean that the regulated gambling sector should have lower, less fair or less safe standards. Britain is, and must continue to be, a world leader in providing consumers with a fair and safe gambling market,” Miller said.

GC increasing black market enforcement

Meanwhile Gambling Commission CEO Andrew Rhodes told an audience at ICE Barcelona 2025 in January, the regulator had heavily increased its action against the black market.

The Commission is now targeting “upstream” and takes aim at IP hosts, search engines, payment providers and software providers.

“We have spent the last two years in particular not just targeting illegal activity but also building our own resources, skills and capabilities,” Rhodes said.

“Since the start of the financial year, our team has issued over 770 cease and desist, and disruption notices – this includes 262 cease-and-desists issued to operators and 205 to advertisers.

“Over that same period the Commission has referred over 102,000 URLs to Google with 64,000 of these removed by the search engine, and 264 websites taken down. This is more than a tenfold increase in URL takedowns in comparison to the whole of 2023 to 2024,” Rhodes added.

Outlook and UK online market advantages

The UK market is one of the most mature online gambling markets in the world. Operators are still experiencing growth in the UK, despite the increasing regulatory landscape. It remains to be seen if this holds true when financial risk checks come into play, along with changes to slots mechanics.

Regulus Partners’ Waugh notes that the UK was one of the first major economies to permit online gambling within its legal framework. “This means that bad practices and also the disquiet that accompanies high growth phases has long ago worked itself out of the system,” Waugh states.

“While the outlook is concerning from a market regulation standpoint, the situation appears less volatile than in some other European countries who opened up their markets relatively recently and are now experiencing quite violent backlashes.”

The UK online market is still a growth sector for most operators, and although it will not have the explosive growth experienced in more in nascent markets, it remains a key indicator of strength and establishment.

Looking at Flutter in particular, Birkin notes that the UK is its home market, adding that “it’s one where market share is more easily estimated, and one where a poor performance will likely reflect badly on the rest of the business in terms of investor and analyst sentiment. So, I would still view it very much as a key territory, not least as a barometer for how an operator is able to perform in a competitive, mature market.

“Any operator can increase revenues in a fast growing, nascent market – but the ability to do so in a competitive, mature market is the mark of a high-quality operator – so anyone underperforming in the UK should be seen as a bit of a red flag,” he concludes.