The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) CEO, Andrew Rhodes, spoke about the challenges facing the Commission during his CEO Briefing speech last week. The Gambling Commission Chief spoke on regulatory challenges, industry pushback, litigation against the UKGC overstepping its remit, football betting, unregulated gambling operations, and cryptocurrencies. Rhodes also announced the commission’s plans for the next 12 months, reiterating its commitment to ensuring public safety and regulatory transparency.
Highlights from the Gambling Commission CEO’s Speech About Regulatory Challenges
- The CEO spoke of legal challenges from litigators alleging that the commission had overstepped its authority. He reiterated that the government sets all policies and the gambling watchdog is merely an enforcer of the law.
- Rhodes acknowledged the media furor, alleging the Commission’s softening stance on football betting. The CEO dismissed those reports, citing that the legislation does not apply to operators targeting consumers outside the UK.
- The Gambling Commission Chief said that growth within the cryptocurrency sector is undeniable. There might come a time when gambling regulators globally will have to regulate crypto gambling operations.
CEO Explains How the Commission is Tackling Illegal Gambling, Lawsuits and Regulatory Challenges
During his speech at the 2025 CEO Briefing, the Chief of the UK Gambling Commission, Andrew Rhodes, spoke on several hot topics. He mentioned lawsuits filed against the Commission for exceeding its legal remit, allegations of leniency toward football betting, and the Commission’s war on illegal gambling operators.
As online gambling continues to gain popularity in Europe, regulators feel the urgent need for stricter legislation and enforcement. While the UKGC oversees locally licensed operators, it has no control over, say, licensed online casinos in Ireland or the Netherlands. These circumstances prompted the Gambling Commission to establish strategic alliances with other gambling regulators. The recent example is the MoU signed between the UKGC and the Dutch Gambling Commission (KSA) to enforce stricter oversight.
The CEO spoke of the dangers of illegal gambling and the Commission’s role in prohibiting unlicensed gaming operators from targeting consumers in the UK. The UKGC recently published its first report on illegal gambling, and Rhodes explained the scale at which the regulator has been fighting illegal operators.
Rhodes stated:
One of the things that has been talked about a lot in recent years, which there is a particular debate about at the moment, of course, is illegal gambling. We set up our specific team to address this some three years ago, and more recently, our Research and Statistics team has done some tremendous work in this space. We’ve been extremely active in this space, and in talking to a huge number of regulators around the world, we haven’t found any that have invested in the way that we have. We’ve talked about where we are making reductions, able to reduce illegal traffic, and what are the most effective interventions.
The CEO emphasised the general chat around the market on the Commission’s legal responsibilities. He cited several lawsuits and litigation threats from stakeholders, who believe that the UKGC has, in several incidents, overstepped its remit. Rhodes reiterated that it is the government that frames the policies. The Commission merely enforces the law.
Rhodes said:
There’s also been actually a reasonable amount of litigation, or threatened litigation, involving the Commission, where people are seeking to challenge our role or trying to focus our role in ways which are more about how they wish our remit was, rather than how Parliament defined it, and that’s making for quite a challenging time for us. To be crystal clear, our remit is unchanged. If you think about the role of the Gambling Commission, sometimes people overstate the role that we have. Policy is set by the Government. We work within the confines of the Act that we’ve been given and the policy that we’ve been given, and that’s our job. Our obligation is to aim to permit gambling, providing it’s in line with the licensing objectives, and that’s what we will continue to do.
CEO Dismisses Rumours of “Softening” Stance on Football Betting, Talks About Regulating Cryptocurrencies
Rhodes cited a recent media narrative in which the Gambling Commission had reportedly “softened” its stance on football betting. He dismissed the claim and explained that while the Commission believes that unregulated operators sponsoring football clubs is wrong, it does not constitute a violation of licensing legislation when the operators do not target consumers in the UK.
He said:
I read some media coverage lately which claimed the Commission has ‘softened’ its position on this topic, but that’s not true at all. The Commission thinks it is wrong that people are sponsoring football clubs who don’t have a licence in this country. We just think that is wrong. But it is not necessarily automatically an infringement of the licensing objectives, because if they are not taking any traffic from Great Britain, it is difficult to see how that would be an infringement.
Discrepancies in the UK’s gambling legislation have been a recent point of conflict. Earlier this month, MLAs from the Northern Ireland Assembly’s All-Party Group had penned a letter to Chancellor Rachel Reeves, demanding a rise in gambling taxes on online betting operators. The petitioners argued that in the absence of established laws regulating online gaming, lowering tax brackets would incentivise operators to lure consumers from low-risk sports betting markets to high-risk slots and casino games.
The UKGC had recently investigated complaints of unfair account restrictions. The CEO briefly touched upon the subject during his speech, noting that their own report shows a much lower level than the complaints claimed. He mentioned that it isn’t a regulatory issue.
The CEO noted:
There had become a very dominant narrative about the way the industry is operating, and what this data shows is, yes, there are people having their accounts restricted for commercial reasons, but not at the sorts of levels reported. That is not a regulatory issue, but what we can see is what the actual scale of that is compared to the narrative that we saw in the public debate.
Rhodes also spoke of cryptocurrencies being the next huge deal in the online betting industry. While the Gambling Commission has no immediate plans to regulate crypto gambling, the CEO explained that the demographic shift will demand regulatory amendments in the near future.
He explained:
One of the other challenges that I think we have, we were just talking about at the International Association of Gaming Regulators (IAGR) at their latest conference two weeks ago, is cryptocurrencies. The growth in cryptocurrencies amongst younger demographics means that there is pressure building within the system. But that’s not me committing to saying we’re going to start licensing crypto. The reality is, in some years to come, there will probably be a significant cohort of consumers who use cryptocurrencies because that is what they’re accustomed to. It is a demographic shift that will find they have no place in the legitimate industry because of the currency they use.