The global unregulated online gambling market reached $5.9tn in wagering value in 2025, up 4% from $5.7tn in 2024, according to a new report from Gaming Compliance International (GCI). The figure continues a two-year expansion that saw the sector grow 12% the year before, from $5.1tn in 2023.
GCI’s Online Gaming 2025: Global report estimates that unregulated operators account for 78% of global online GGR, with the licensed sector holding just 22%. The firm characterised the unregulated market as the world’s third-largest economy, trailing only the United States and China, and classified it as the largest form of cybercrime globally.
A Three-Sector Marketplace
GCI described itself as a regtech consultancy operating an AI-powered platform designed to help governments, regulators, and policy-makers understand the online gambling sector. Its methodology covered only operators actively conducting transactions and targeting local markets. Accessible but non-transacting sites were excluded. The firm applied a mix of automated monitoring and human analysis to assess wagering volumes and GGR, using a proprietary measure called Value Per Visit (VPV) to capture spending differences between licensed and unlicensed operators.
The report introduced a three-sector framework for understanding the online gambling landscape: regulated, unregulated, and a third category GCI termed “unacknowledged.” This third layer covers products that consumers engage with but that fall outside conventional regulatory classification, including certain crypto-linked gambling products and prediction markets in most jurisdictions outside the United States.
GCI president Ismail Vali said the three sectors are indistinguishable to the average consumer:
“What we are now seeing is a three-sector gaming marketplace in every jurisdiction — regulated, unregulated, and unacknowledged — and it is this third layer that is accelerating consumer confusion, unregulated growth, and regulatory complexity at scale. The audience does not distinguish between these sectors. They experience one marketplace, where everything is accessible and everything competes equally.”
The concept connects to what GCI calls the “White Noise Marketplace,” a condition in which consumers cannot reliably differentiate between licensed products, unlicensed equivalents, and platforms that occupy legal grey areas.
Illegal Streaming as a Distribution Channel
The report identified illegal sports streaming as a major recruitment channel for unregulated gambling. GCI found that unregulated gambling advertisements appeared on more than 80% of illegal sports streams in the US and UK during 2024 and 2025, with events such as March Madness and the World Cup generating concentrated exposure to unlicensed products.
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Prediction Markets and the Grey Zone
GCI’s scope excluded US prediction markets from the unregulated category. In the United States, prediction markets fall under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), placing them outside the firm’s definition of unregulated gambling. Other jurisdictions have no comparable framework, and the regulatory response has been uneven.
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Brazil moved in the other direction, declaring prediction markets illegal earlier this year, with telecommunications regulator Anatel blocking 28 platforms. Gibraltar took a different approach, licensing operator Predict Street under its existing gambling legislation.
The divergence illustrates the challenge GCI’s report identifies at a structural level. Products in the same category can be licensed, unlicensed, or unclassified depending on the jurisdiction, complicating both regulatory enforcement and market comparisons.
The Scale of the Regulatory Challenge
GCI CEO Matt Holt framed the report’s findings as a structural problem for regulators, not a marginal one:
“At $5.9tn in wagering value, unregulated online gambling is one of the largest economic systems in the world, operating largely outside regulatory oversight. Regulators are not facing a marginal challenge, but a dominant one — the majority of activity is occurring beyond the regulated perimeter. Our role is to provide full transparency across the total marketplace, enabling regulators to act with confidence.”
The report does not forecast whether the regulated share will recover. At current growth rates, the unregulated sector added $800bn in wagering value between 2023 and 2025. That two-year window coincides with a period in which several major European markets tightened licensing requirements, raised operator taxes, and expanded enforcement against unlicensed operators. The regulated sector’s 22% market share suggests those measures have not reversed the underlying trajectory.
Source: Gaming Compliance International
