He said the sector had seemingly misunderstood his comments on internal due diligence and he couldn’t understand why licensed players would want to be in business with a company supporting illegal competitors.  

In November Rhodes advised stakeholders to carry out their own due diligence on suppliers to ensure they are not providing services to the black market. 

“The Gambling Commission’s strategy on combatting illegal gambling is to cause as much up-stream disruption as we can, which is why we have focused on ISPs (internet service providers), payment providers, search engines, software suppliers and more,” Rhodes said at the time. 

Industry hits back

Speaking to iGB following Rhodes’ speech, a number of stakeholders said they believed it would be a hugely difficult task to track all their supplier partners and it was ultimately up to the regulator to enforce these practices within its own work.  

“I think it’s incredibly difficult for licensed operators to bring that pressure to bear on the suppliers, other than just asking a simple question,” Richard Williams, partner at Keystone Law, told iGB. 

“For example, if a software developer supplied games to GB and non-GB licensed operators, how would the licensee know if the non-GB operator was allowing GB customers to gamble with it? The same applies to payment providers and other third-party suppliers.”   

But addressing viewers of the Harris Hagan webinar on Wednesday, Rhodes said the industry appeared to have misinterpreted his comments in November.  

“Some interpreted my remarks as meaning the industry should police this rather than the regulator and actually I don’t understand why anyone in the licensed industry would want to be in business with a company that would be supporting illegal competition,” he said.  

“It doesn’t make sense to me, but it might suggest that the industry isn’t as big as some say, which I don’t think is what people think.”  

Operators will be impacted if suppliers’ licences are revoked

Rhodes said if a supplier has their licence revoked by the Gambling Commission their activities must cease immediately in the UK and this would disrupt operators and other suppliers utilising their services.  

“If they’re supplying operators obviously those services stop immediately as well. I would say to anyone relying on a third party, they need to be comfortable they are not facing that risk and, if you think you are, I would say you should be doing something about it,” Rhodes added.  

In 2025 the Gambling Commission will continue its efforts to stamp out the black market by utilising covert surveillance, test purchasing and other investigative tools to identify those who are assisting illegal operators.  

In December it opened an investigation into Evolution after it found the games provider was supplying its services to unlicensed operators in the UK.  

The company faces the threat of enforcement action. Depending on its outcome, the review could result in no penalty. Equally, Evolution could face a financial sanction or licence suspension or revocation in the UK.   

Evolution said at the time it was “cooperating fully” with the Commission and had “taken requested immediate actions to remedy the situation”.  

Rhodes did not comment on the ongoing review but did remind the industry it should be assessing its partnerships.  

“The reality is we need to understand the flow into it and why that happens as well as how we prevent it. We’ve focused our efforts on upstream disruption as much as we possibly can,” he said of the black market.