The BGC Puts £800m on the Black Market This Season, £1bn by 2027/28

Grainne Hurst wrote to warn that unlicensed bookmakers will take £800 million in Premier League bets this season, reaching £1 billion a year by 2027/28. The numbers are arguable. The government's own impact assessment conceding the mechanism is not.

• The Betting and Gaming Council warned on 24 August that unlicensed bookmakers will take up to £800 million in Premier League bets this season, climbing a further £200 million next season to around £1 billion a year by 2027/28
• Chief executive Grainne Hurst said criminal operators already take millions from every round of matches, pay no UK tax, and sit outside licensing, consumer-protection and safer-gambling rules
• The warning lands as the Premier League begins its first season without gambling brands on front-of-shirt sponsorship
• It also lands months before remote gaming duty nearly doubles to 40%, alongside a proposed rise in general betting duty from 15% to 25%, changes the BGC has already said risk a £3.1 billion economic hit
• The government's own assessment accepts that operators could cut returns to customers, and that some of those customers would switch activity or move to illegal sites

A Letter, a Number, and a Season That Starts Without Shirt Sponsors

The Betting and Gaming Council put a figure on something it has been arguing for two years. In research published on 24 August, the trade body said unlicensed operators will take up to £800 million in Premier League betting this season, and that the figure will climb by a further £200 million next season to reach around £1 billion a year by 2027/28.

Grainne Hurst, its chief executive, framed the problem in terms of what those operators do not do rather than what they take. They pay no UK tax. They hold no licence. They apply none of the consumer-protection or safer-gambling requirements that licensed operators spend heavily to meet. And, on the BGC's account, they are already taking millions from every round of fixtures.

The timing is not accidental and the BGC has not pretended otherwise. This is the first Premier League season in which no club carries a gambling brand on the front of its shirt, the end of a voluntary withdrawal agreed by the clubs rather than imposed by statute. It is also the season running up to April 2026, when remote gaming duty rises from 21% to 40%, with a further proposed increase in general betting duty from 15% to 25%.

The trade body has already told the government that the duty rise risks a £3.1 billion economic hit and 40,000 jobs. The £800 million black-market figure, and the £1 billion it becomes two seasons out, is the same argument arriving from a different direction.

What makes it harder to dismiss than a typical lobbying number is that the government has partly conceded the mechanism. The official assessment of the duty change accepts that operators may respond by cutting the returns they offer customers, and that some of those customers would then either stop or move to unlicensed sites. The dispute is about magnitude, not direction.

Context matters for the magnitude. The Gambling Commission has put the UK black market at around £16.6 billion in stakes, and independent forecasting has suggested it could nearly double to £33 billion by 2028. Against those figures, £800 million across an entire Premier League season is not the most alarming number in the debate. It is simply the most legible one, which is why the £1 billion it grows into by 2027/28 is the one being quoted.

The Number Is Doing Political Work, and That Does Not Make It Wrong

There is an easy dismissal available here and it should be resisted. The BGC is a trade body, the figure is unaudited, and it has arrived at the most useful possible moment for its members. All true. But the same is true of nearly every number in gambling policy, including the ones produced by campaigners for harm reduction, and the test has to be whether the mechanism is real rather than whether the messenger is interested. On this the government's own impact assessment does most of the BGC's work: it accepts that a duty rise reduces what operators can return to customers, and that reduced returns push some customers elsewhere. Once that is conceded, the argument is arithmetic, and arithmetic is where trade bodies are strongest.

Shirt Sponsorship Is the Wrong Variable to Watch

The letter leans on the first season without front-of-shirt gambling brands, and that framing is weaker than the tax one. Sponsorship affects brand visibility, not price. A customer does not move to an unlicensed site because a logo disappeared from a shirt; they move because the unlicensed site offers better returns, no verification and no limits. Removing licensed advertising may slowly shrink the licensed market's share of attention, which matters over years, but it is not the mechanism that produces an £800 million figure in a single season. The duty rise is. Conflating the two lets critics attack the weaker claim and ignore the stronger one, which is a strange choice for a body that has the stronger one available.

Britain Is Now Running the Experiment Germany Already Ran

The useful comparison is not to Britain's own past but to markets that have already tried this. Germany's black market is larger than its regulators admit, a direct consequence of a licensed product deliberately made less attractive than the unlicensed one, through stake limits, deposit caps and tax. The UK is choosing a different instrument, taxation rather than product restriction, but it is aiming at the same variable: what a licensed operator can afford to give a customer. Whether Britain ends up where Germany did depends on how much of the 19 point duty increase is absorbed and how much is passed on. Nobody knows that yet, including the BGC.

The trade body has produced a number it cannot fully evidence, at exactly the moment it is most useful. It has also identified the one variable the Treasury's own analysis agrees will move. Both things are true, and only the second one matters in April.