UKGC Have Delisted 266,667 Illegal Gambling URLs

^{The UKGC has had 266,667 URLs linking to illegal online casinos removed from search engine results, with more enforcement to come. (Photo: Alamy.)}

By Daniel Smythe

The latest data on the UK Gambling Commission’s efforts to protect players was presented by Executive Director Tim Miller on Tuesday at the Ethical Gambling Forum. As part of his speech on the future of UK online gambling, Miller highlighted the Commission’s efforts but stressed that threats remain an issue for the industry.

As per the UK 2005 Gambling Act, UK casino sites must be licensed by the Gambling Commission, which is why unlicensed platforms are illegal.

The push to remove illegal sites 

In his speech, Miller laid out the scale of the UKGC's recent enforcement activity. Of the 397,527 URLs reported to search engines in 2025-26, 266,667 have been removed, a takedown rate of around 67%. Alongside that, the Commission has:

• Issued 741 cease-and-desist notices to operators and advertisers
• Referred 1,068 websites to search engines for delisting
• Disrupted 1,134 websites through takedowns or geo-blocking

For context: a single website can contain hundreds of individual URLs. Casinos.com is one website, but casinos.com/news, casinos.com/uk and so on are sub-URLs within it. That gap explains why URL-level takedowns vastly outnumber website-level disruptions, and why the Commission frames its progress in both metrics.

The data points to a proactive enforcement strategy that's starting to bite, but it hasn't eliminated the problem. Searches for problematic keywords still surface unlicensed results, though casinos.com has observed those results thinning compared to earlier in 2026.

Testing LLMs for regulatory awareness

Even with 67% of reported URLs gone, the unlicensed market still has reach, and not just in search results. Casinos.com put two large language models, ChatGPT and Gemini, to the test, asking each how many non-GamStop casinos are available to UK players. The results were mixed.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT held the line. It refused to give a number and was clear on the legality, telling us: "All legal UK casinos must be on GamStop, that's a regulatory requirement." Pressed for a recommendation, it refused outright and offered to explain the risks instead. Strictly speaking, GamStop is a self-exclusion scheme rather than a licence. But UKGC-licensed operators are required under their licence conditions to participate in it, so ChatGPT's framing holds up.

ChatGPT's response is sharper than what casinos.com got from a test in March 2026, when it eventually caved and named unlicensed sites. 

Gemini

Gemini was less reassuring. It acknowledged that non-GamStop sites "operate outside of UK law" and stopped short of recommending any, but went on to compare UKGC-licensed and unlicensed casinos, suggesting the latter offer better conditions in some areas. That framing skips the obvious point: a casino with no UK licence has no obligation to honour anything it advertises. Better bonus terms mean nothing if there's no regulator to escalate to.

We can't say what's driving the shift. UKGC delisting may be cleaning up the search results these models pull from, providers may have tightened their own safety guardrails, or both.

What it means for player protection 

Enforcement is moving in the right direction, but the unlicensed casino market hasn't disappeared, and not every information source can be trusted to flag it. Anyone gambling in the UK should check an operator's licence status on the UKGC public register before depositing. If a site isn't on the register, the consumer protections that come with a UKGC licence don't apply.