GamStop has met with Meta and Reddit as it continues to battle against the surge of non-GamStop casinos targeting self-excluded players in the UK.
Speaking during SBC’s Player Protection Day, GamStop’s Head of External Affairs, Matt Burgiss, confirmed that the organisation is seeking to reduce the visibility of advertising across social media platforms.
Unlicensed casinos in the UK have become notorious for targeting players who have already used the country’s self-exclusion system, and social media is flooded with such operators promoting themselves on the fact that their services fall outside the oversight of the service.
Earlier this year, GamStop’s Chief Marketing Officer, Katie Reynolds-Jones, revealed that Reddit’s chat bots have been found to recommend self-excluded individuals to access non-GamStop casinos.
Burgiss said: “We’ve started to do some work with sort of big tech companies like Meta and Reddit and things like that to try and get those adverts kind of taken down as quickly as possible and recognised through their AI software.”
Concerns continue to be raised over an apparent lack of action by social media platforms to address the issue. Outside of the UK, the Dutch trade body VNLOK has found that 97% of gambling advertising on Meta is from the unlicensed sector, underlining the battle facing organisations like GamStop.
In light of the size of the UK’s black market, which is estimated to have reached stakes of £16.6bn annually, Burgiss called for greater collaboration between stakeholders.
He said: “The black market is a serious threat to vulnerable people that we obviously serve. It’s a very complex issue. It’s very difficult. It’s not a one-person or one-organisation thing that can be solved.
“It’s really about everyone playing their part within that. I think the government, certainly in the UK for us, have a part to play. But in other regulatory spaces as well. I think the industry itself. Anyone that’s using a supplier that is also supplying the black market needs to have a look at that as well because it’s funding [these adverts].”
Earlier this year, the UK government formed the Illegal Gambling Taskforce alongside the Gambling Commission and provided the UK regulator £26m in extra funding across three years to continue its efforts against illegal operators.
However, concerns remain that the government is still yet to grasp the full scale of the illegal sector that is estimated to have reached £16.6bn in stakes in 2025, as Entain’s Group General Counsel and Chief Customer Care Officer, Simon Zinger, described the £26m figure as a ‘drop in the ocean’ when speaking at the Betting and Gaming Council’s AGM.
Reflecting on the challenge ahead, Burgiss added: “There’s a lot of work going on from our end, but it isn’t something that we can solve alone. We’re just trying to collaborate with as many different [stakeholders] because it’s very difficult for our consumers to see, and it’s that extra kind of push into a market that’s extremely dangerous.”