In continuing to increase its efforts to disrupt illegal online gambling, the United Kingdom Gambling Commission (UKGC) referred 7.7 million URLs linked to illegal gambling activities to search engines between July and September this year.
According to the regulator’s latest enforcement figures, 3,019,291 URLs were taken down during the period, while 1,835 websites were submitted to search engines for delisting. This marked a significant increase compared with the 147,721 URLs referred to search engines between April and June.
Speaking at the regulator’s CEO Briefing, acting chief executive Sarah Gardner (the UKGC is currently looking for a new permanent CEO) noted that the Commission had substantially stepped up its enforcement efforts. This comes after the regulator recently received additional government funding, part of the GBP 26 million (almost $35 million) in extra funding that the UKGC should receive over the next three years.
Gardner further highlighted the significant expansion of the UKGC’s enforcement efforts, saying that between April and September, the regulator issued 1,005 cease-and-desist notices to advertisers and operators. This is significantly up from 741 during the entirety of the previous financial year.
