Betting
£8m St Leger Black Market Forecast Reignites UK Betting Regulation Debate
The BGC says £8m was staked illegally at this year's St Leger meeting. Here's how that claim fits into eighteen months of tax changes, affordability check trials, and competing figures from regulator and industry alike.
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The Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) forecast that around £8m would be staked with illegal operators across the Betfred St Leger Festival this year, including £2m on the St Leger itself, timed to the race's 250th anniversary.
It's one entry in a longer run of similar figures the BGC has published over the past year and a half, against a backdrop of real, documented changes to how the regulated betting market is taxed and policed.
Below is what's actually been said and published, by whom, and when, without assuming which side of the resulting disagreement is correct.
The regulatory backdrop
- 1
2023: The Gambling Act Review White Paper set out the government's plan for the first overhaul of UK gambling regulation in nearly two decades, including the proposal for financial risk checks on customer spending.
- 2
April 2026: Remote Gaming Duty rose from 21% to 40%.
- 3
2027 (planned): Remote betting duty is set to rise from 15% to 25%, with UK horse racing excluded.
- 4
Q3 2026 (target): The Gambling Commission's Financial Risk Assessment (FRA) framework was scheduled for full operator rollout, following a pilot period.
What the regulator's own pilot data shows
The Gambling Commission has published pilot data on its FRA trials, stating that approximately 95% of first-stage checks and 97% of second-stage checks resolved without interrupting the customer's play.
Commission director Helen Rhodes said in an update that commentary around the checks had been "ill-informed or inaccurate," and described the pilot's findings on frictionlessness as encouraging.
The BGC disputes that characterisation. It has pointed to inconsistencies between the three credit reference agencies used in the pilot, saying that in some cases a risk flag was raised by only one of the three, and argues that once lower-spending casual bettors are excluded from the sample, the proportion of regular customers affected by checks is higher than the headline figures suggest.
In April 2026, the BGC published YouGov polling in which 65% of respondents said they would refuse to submit financial documents such as bank statements to continue betting.
This isn't a new dispute. In January 2023, Gambling Commission deputy chief executive Sarah Gardner said the Commission had "no time for" black market risk being overstated without credible evidence, responding to a BGC-commissioned report that had claimed money staked with unregulated operators doubled to £2.8bn in 2020.
The BGC's response at the time cited separate PwC research showing the number of customers using unlicensed betting sites had also more than doubled over the same period.
Each of these releases was published in the same period the government was raising betting duty, and the Gambling Commission was running its FRA pilot.
The BGC has consistently linked its event-level figures to that regulatory backdrop; the Commission has consistently maintained its pilot data shows the checks working with limited friction. Both positions are on the public record; this piece isn't attempting to settle which one is right.
Independent estimates of the wider market
A small number of figures in this debate come from outside either the BGC or the Commission:
- 1
H2 Gambling Capital has estimated offshore betting turnover rose from roughly £5bn in 2019 to around £16.6bn last year, with a forecast of over £33bn by 2028.
- 2
Frontier Economics estimated in 2024 that £2.7bn a year was being wagered with illegal online operators, with around 1.5 million people engaging with the black market including unlawful premises.
- 3
WARC found that unregulated operators account for almost half of UK gambling advertising expenditure.
- 4
In June 2026, responding to analysis suggesting illegal operators account for under 10% of UK online gambling activity, BGC chief executive Grainne Hurst said she did not dispute the figure itself, but argued that even a smaller share represents a scale of consumer exposure that "should alarm everyone."
What's at stake for racing specifically
British horseracing has its own documented position in this debate, separate from the BGC's general warnings.
The British Horseracing Authority's "Save Our Bets" campaign has stated that if affordability checks cause an estimated 45,000 customers to leave the regulated market, that would cost the sport £13.2m in Betting Levy payments.
The wider £250m five-year figure often quoted alongside it traces back to modelling by independent consultancy Regulus Partners, first published in October 2023 in a letter to the then culture secretary signed by Arena Racing Company, the Jockey Club, the Racecourse Association and five other racing bodies; a cross-party group of MPs repeated the same £250m figure in a letter to the current culture secretary in May 2026.[1][2] The BGC says its members contribute more than £350m to British racing annually, a figure that forms part of the industry's argument for why the regulated market's competitiveness matters to the sport beyond betting revenue alone.
Louis Hobbs is the Sports Editor at SportsBoom, overseeing daily coverage across a wide range of sports while shaping the site’s editorial direction and breaking news agenda.
When he’s not editing the website from home or SportsBoom’s London office, Louis can usually be found in the darts or snooker press room. He has covered both sports extensively for SportsBoom, reporting live from venues for over three years and building strong relationships across the professional circuits.
With a background in interviews, exclusives and live event reporting, Louis combines on-the-ground insight with sharp editorial judgement to ensure SportsBoom delivers authoritative, engaging and timely sports journalism.
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References
- 1.Racing Post - British racing set for £250m hit over five years because of affordability checks, warn leading industry figures (Oct 2023)
- 2.Racing Post - Gambling Commission promises frictionless affordability checks, but the formbook says take that with a pinch of salt (Jul 2026