Europe’s illegal online market hits €12bn — a quarter of all online play

A study published on 7 September 2026 puts Europe’s illegal online gambling market at €12bn in net revenue for 2025 — three times its 2019 size, and roughly 25% of the total online gambling sector. For licensed operators the number is not a curiosity. It is a quarter of the addressable market sitting outside the rules they pay to follow.

Who published it, and why that matters

The research was commissioned by Euromat, the European gaming and amusement federation, and carried out by Regulus Partners and Helios. It is worth stating plainly: Euromat represents land-based operators, and its members have an interest in the argument that restrictive online regulation pushes players offshore. That does not make the measurement wrong, but it does mean the framing should be read as advocacy as well as research.

What the study measures is web traffic and marketing footprint converted into an estimate of net revenue. That is a reasonable approach for a market nobody reports, and it is also an estimate. Treat €12bn as an order of magnitude, not an audited figure.

What the study says is driving it

The authors point at four things: limited choice created by regulation and state monopolies, low visibility for licensed brands, distortions of price or value, and interventionist measures such as affordability checks. To that they add one technical enabler — the growth of cryptocurrency, which the study calls key to building many of these businesses.

The crypto point is the one suppliers should sit with. An offshore operator with crypto rails has no acquiring bank to satisfy, no local payment provider to underwrite it and no settlement window to explain. A licensed operator in the same market is negotiating with processors who price gambling as high risk. That is a structural cost difference before a single player is acquired.

The channelisation problem in one sentence

Every regulated market is running the same experiment: how much friction can be added to the licensed product before players stop choosing it. Belgium’s regulator reported first-time online registrations down 43% in 2025 while revenue grew, which is what a shrinking funnel with a hardening core looks like. The Euromat figure is the other half of that picture — the players who did not disappear, but who are now counted somewhere nobody reports.

For an operator entering a European market in 2026, the practical reading is that a market’s official size is not its real size, and its official growth rate is not the growth rate you will compete against.

What it changes for operators and suppliers

Three things, none of them dramatic.

Payment coverage stops being a checklist item. If the unlicensed competition converts deposits at a higher rate because it takes methods you cannot, that gap is your channelisation gap. Local rails, more than one provider per method and sensible routing are not a nice-to-have — they are the part of the product where the licensed operator can actually compete.

Catalogue depth matters more in restricted markets, not less. Where advertising is limited and bonusing is capped, the product is what is left. A market where you can only run 300 certified games against an offshore lobby showing thousands is a market where the licensed brand has to win on trust, speed and payouts rather than on choice.

Certification is the moat, not the tax. The per-market certification work that makes a licensed launch slow is also the reason a licensed operator can advertise, bank and survive an audit. Suppliers who treat it as paperwork rather than as part of the product tend to be the ones whose timelines slip.

The read for 2027 planning

If a quarter of European online play is already outside the licensed market, the question for any operator planning a European launch is not only “can we get licensed here” but “what share of this market is actually reachable through the licensed channel, and at what acquisition cost”. Those are different questions and they produce different business cases.

The answer varies enormously by country, which is why a stack that can be configured market by market beats one that assumes Europe is a single territory. Provider availability, payment methods and reporting duties differ at every border, and so does channelisation.

Based on research commissioned by Euromat and carried out by Regulus Partners and Helios, published 7 September 2026, and on the Belgian Gaming Commission’s 2025 annual report. Figures for the unlicensed market are modelled estimates, not reported revenue.