Every major football tournament brings a familiar set of anxieties. A decade ago, regulators approaching a World Cup or European Championship would typically focus their messaging on gambling-related harm, excessive advertising and the risk of vulnerable consumers being swept up in a month-long betting frenzy.
This summer, the tone sounds noticeably different.
Across Europe, regulators and industry bodies have spent much of the build-up to the FIFA World Cup warning consumers about illegal gambling operators. The French regulator, l’Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ), has highlighted the threat posed by prediction markets, illegal affiliates and influencers. The Dutch regulator, Kansspelautoriteit (KSA), has increased supervision of both legal and illegal advertising. In Britain, industry attention has focused heavily on black market activity and concerns that unlicensed operators will use the tournament as a recruitment opportunity.
At first glance, the shift appears striking. Has the gambling industry moved on from concerns about player protection within the regulated market? Have regulators concluded that illegal operators now pose a greater threat than licensed ones?
The answer, according to regulators and experts, is more nuanced. Far from replacing player protection, the growing focus on illegal gambling reflects a belief that consumer safeguards and channelisation have become inseparable.
In other words, regulators increasingly recognise that protections only work if consumers remain within the regulated system.
Significant implications
The clearest explanation comes from Ismail Vali, president of Gaming Compliance International (GCI), who argues that the industry’s understanding of risk has evolved.
“Player protection remains critically important, and that has not changed,” he says. “What has changed is the industry’s understanding of where many of the risks now exist.”
Historically, public debate concentrated on licensed operators because that was where regulators had visibility. Data existed, interventions could be measured and compliance obligations could be enforced. The regulated sector was therefore the most visible source of potential harm.
Today, however, regulators are paying increasing attention to what Vali calls the “systemic” threat posed by unlicensed operators.
“The regulated sector is the visible risk,” he says. “Illegal gambling is increasingly the structural risk to marketplace outcomes.”
Self-exclusion systems, affordability checks, responsible gambling tools and dispute-resolution mechanisms all rely on one fundamental condition: consumers must actually use regulated operators.
“A self-exclusion scheme only protects a consumer if that consumer does not immediately migrate to an illegal operator,” Vali notes.
The implication is significant. For years, gambling policy was largely concerned with regulating licensed businesses. Increasingly, regulators are asking a different question: not whether operators are complying with rules, but whether consumers are staying within the regulated market at all.
“The purpose of regulation is not to exclusively regulate regulated operators,” Vali argues. “The purpose of regulation is to regulate the marketplace.”
The Dutch balancing act
Few jurisdictions illustrate this evolution more clearly than the Netherlands.
The Dutch government recently unveiled plans to strengthen consumer protections, including tighter restrictions on gambling activity and advertising, while simultaneously seeking additional powers for KSA to combat illegal gambling.
To some observers, those objectives may appear contradictory. Tougher rules can make licensed products less attractive, potentially pushing consumers towards unregulated alternatives.
KSA sees the relationship differently.
“The illegal and legal market are communicating vessels,” the regulator says. “When strengthening player protections, it is likely some players will drift away from the legal to illegal offering. To contain this, it is necessary to battle the illegal market even harder and more effectively,” a KSA spokesperson tells iGB.
That logic increasingly underpins European regulatory thinking. Rather than viewing consumer protection and black market enforcement as competing priorities, regulators see them as complementary.
KSA remains adamant that “player protection is our number one priority”. Yet it also argues that “on the black market, player protection is far worse. Therefore, when strengthening player protections, we also need to battle the illegal market even harder.”
The World Cup has reinforced that concern. During previous tournaments, KSA observed a surge in sports betting activity and worries that younger adults could be drawn into gambling for the first time.
“Our main concern is that vulnerable groups, such as 18-24 year olds, will start betting during this period,” the regulator says.
Consequently, it has launched awareness campaigns while increasing supervision of advertising by both licensed and unlicensed operators.
Far from abandoning player protection, the Dutch approach suggests regulators increasingly regard channelisation as part of the consumer-protection toolkit itself.
The French strategy
The French regulator tells a similar story.
ANJ rejects the notion that concern about illegal gambling is a new development. France has long prioritised channelisation, maintaining a channelisation rate of around 85% through website-blocking and payment-blocking measures.
“We don’t see a specific emergence of black market concerns in France,” ANJ says in a written response to iGB. “The fight against the illegal offer has always been a priority since the beginning of gambling regulation in France.”
At the same time, ANJ insists that player protection remains central to its World Cup strategy.
The regulator has closely monitored marketing expenditure, engaged with operators and advertising professionals to limit promotional activity during the tournament and launched a dedicated responsible gambling campaign called “Zone à risques”.
“In France, our motto is that gambling must be recreational,” ANJ explains. “Consequently, legal operators are allowed to put forward an attractive offer, provided they ensure that players continue to treat gambling as a form of recreation.”
Yet ANJ also acknowledges that technological developments have altered the regulatory landscape.
“It is true that regulators are, at the same time, increasingly warning of the dangers of illegal gambling,” it says, pointing to “the use of affiliates by illegal operators and new types of games, such as prediction markets”.
These developments have made unlicensed gambling easier to access and harder to distinguish from regulated offerings.
As a result, ANJ argues that anti-black market efforts and player protection obligations must advance together. “The ANJ’s efforts to combat illegal gambling go hand in hand with the increased demands placed on legal operators to better fulfil their obligations to identify and support proble…