Punters are at risk of flocking to the gambling black market should compulsory, betting spending limits come into force, a new poll finds. Already, billions of pounds are spent by UK bettors on the thousands of unregulated sites operating unsafely.

The number of people betting here has also doubled from 220,000 to 460,000 to in recent times. Without regulation, these markets therefore don’t need to hold the current strict standards placed across the gambling industry.

As well as not carrying out strict ID and age verification checks, these sites will target problem gamblers instead of intervening when customers show signs of problem gambling, as regulated operators currently do.

They also fail to offer safer gambling tools like cooling off periods and deposit limits.