The World Cup remains the same, but the script shouted by European regulators has changed. Ten years ago, during major competitions, the regulatory stance was unified as "protect players, restrict advertising, prevent addiction". This summer's early warning in France includes warnings about the prediction market and illegal influencers, the Netherlands is tightening both legal and illegal advertising, and the UK is repeatedly emphasizing that the black market is seizing the opportunity during the event window. At first glance, it seems that the regulatory focus has shifted from "managing our own licensed operators" to "keeping an eye on those outside". There was once an uncomfortable question from the outside world: Has player protection been relegated to a secondary concern? Ismail Vali, President of Gaming Compliance International, dispelled this concern—"Player protection is still crucial, and that hasn't changed. What has changed is the industry's understanding of where the risks really lie."
Visible rules and invisible funnels
Vali split the risks into two layers. Licensed operators are "visible risks"—data is here, interventions can be measured, compliance obligations can be enforced, so the regulatory spotlight naturally focuses here. But the real structural problems are accumulating on the other side: self-exclusion systems, affordability checks, responsible gambling tools, dispute arbitration mechanisms—all these protective measures share an invisible premise—consumers must still be within the licensed system. Once they jump out of this fence and run to an illegal platform that does not require age verification, does not engage in safe interactions, nor accepts any exclusion registrations, all previous protections instantly reset. "The purpose of regulation is not only to regulate licensed operators," Vali said, "the purpose is to regulate the entire market."
The Dutch regulatory authority KSA condensed this logic into a physical metaphor—"The legal market and the illegal market are interconnected." When you add water to the player protection end, the water level indeed rises, but the other end of the connecting pipe also simultaneously draws away some of the existing volume. "Strengthening player protection may cause some players to drift from the legal end to the illegal end, and to contain this effect, it is necessary to simultaneously intensify the crackdown on the illegal market." KSA explicitly stated that player protection remains the top priority, but concerns about the 18 to 24 age group being involved during the World Cup have forced it to extend its regulatory reach to both licensed and unlicensed ends. Compared to counting its own chips at the poker table, it is more concerned about how many people are left at the table.
France: Achieving an 85% channel diversion rate is no coincidence
France internally responded to the entire discussion somewhat bluntly—what you call "new trends," we don't see as new. ANJ in a written response stated: "Since the launch of French gambling regulation, combating illegal supply has always been a priority." France has maintained a channel diversion rate of about 85% through domain blocking and payment blocking, ranking among the top in Europe. But it simultaneously rejected the narrative that "player protection has been marginalized": "ANJ's efforts to combat illegal gambling, along with demanding legal operators better fulfill their obligations to identify and support problem gamblers, are being advanced simultaneously." France's slogan remains "Gambling must maintain its entertainment properties," but acknowledges that technological advancements—especially illegal operators using affiliate marketing and prediction markets among new categories—are making the line between legal and illegal increasingly difficult to discern.
The UK side is more cautious. The UK Gambling Commission stated that the data is "quite stable" so far, with "no significant different consumer behavior patterns" found on the eve of the World Cup. The Commission remains reserved about the claim that "the illegal market is experiencing continuous growth," but the Betting and Gaming Council has already expressed concerns about unlicensed operators acquiring customers during the World Cup. Comparing the three, France is most confident in channel control, the Netherlands is doing the most strenuous balance between "protection-diversion," and the UK is not planning to loosen its stance before sufficient data is available.
The $5.9 trillion gray gambling table
A study released by GCI this month provided a number that makes every "current data does not support" statement seem restrained: by 2025, the global unregulated online gambling betting amount will reach $5.9 trillion, accounting for 78% of the global online gambling gross revenue. Whether this proportion is widely accepted depends on the methodology, but Vali believes that what really should be focused on is not the volume itself, but that the customer acquisition mechanisms of illegal operators have completely changed—"Today's illegal operators can acquire, target, and retain customers through search, social media, affiliate partners, instant messaging platforms, streaming services, AI-driven marketing, and the crypto ecosystem, channels that either did not exist or did not exist at the same scale ten years ago." The regulatory opponents are no longer a few crude websites hidden in offshore servers, but a complete underground ecosystem racing with licensed operators in the same digital corridor.
The definition of success is being rewritten
Victoria Reed, CEO of Better Change, provided another perspective: the player protection capabilities of licensed operators have become normalized. "This World Cup will focus on consumer safety more than ever before, as the number of responsible gambling professionals is expanding, and player tracking technology is also evolving." She feels that external pressure groups no longer need to force the industry and regulators to take action, not because the problem has disappeared, but because protective measures have been embedded into daily operations. The number of people employed full-time to monitor player safety is greater than ever before.
Practitioners who follow the PASA official website should be able to piece together the entire logic chain: player protection has not receded, but its necessary conditions for success are shifting from "licensed operator compliance" to "players staying within the licensed system". Vali's last statement was unmercifully concise—the future success or failure of regulation should not be measured by "how well we regulate licensed operators," but by "whether the entire market has become safer, more accountable, and more fully guided into regulated channels." This World Cup may not be remembered as the starting point of a major explosion of illegal gambling, but it is likely to be seen as a turning point where regulatory bodies realize that "diversion itself is protection."
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This article is from "PASA-Global iGaming Leaders," a gambling industry news channel: https://t.me/pasa_news
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