The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has estimated that 4.31 per cent of online player accounts are subject to some form of restriction imposed by betting companies.
That revelation came after UKGC chief executive Andrew Rhodes launched an investigation into how online betting sites in the UK treat their customers.
The Commission studied data from just under 15 million active player accounts from 2024 and the betting companies who participated in the review had restricted over 640,000 of those accounts for various reasons.
The Numbers Behind The Report
Rhodes revealed the findings in his latest blog on the UKGC’s official website.
“A data request was made in early 2025 to some of the largest online real-event betting providers,” he wrote.
“We collected data related to commercial restrictions applied to active customer accounts within the previous calendar year.
“From a total of 14,923,840 active customer accounts, operators reported 643,779 accounts restricted in some form – a rate of 4.31 per cent.
The most common was a maximum stake limit, with more than 60% of the restricted accounts being hit with a reduced limit on how much they could bet.
Rhodes added: “The second most common form of restriction was account closures, with 2.23 per cent of active accounts being closed for commercial reasons.
“This applies to 51.69 per cent of restricted accounts.
“Given the overlap in the figures, a large proportion of accounts will be subject to stake factoring prior to being permanently closed.
“Several operators report not using account closures for commercial reasons at all.”
In some cases, online players could find themselves unable to place bets as they had been hit with a stake factor restriction of 0.00.
This affected 0.83 per cent of active accounts in the report and 19.15 per cent of restricted accounts.
Interestingly, restricted accounts were more profitable than those that were unaffected, with 46.78 per cent of restricted players being in profit against 25.42 per cent of overall active customers
How Will This Affect Online Bettors In The UK?
The Commission does not want to see the UK following a trend in the United States, where players looking for a wider choice of betting markets with improved bonuses and fewer restrictions have favoured offshore sportsbooks.
Rhodes made the point that it Is not the role of the regulator to mandate how individual operators conduct their risk management.
But equally successful bettors should not be made to feel that they are being unfairly penalised
“Businesses may take commercial decisions providing they do not discriminate on the basis of protected characteristics,” he wrote.
“Being a successful bettor is not a protected characteristic in discrimination law.”
Rhodes concluded: “It is not in our remit to mandate how operators handle their commercial liabilities, but we do have a statutory responsibility to ensure that gambling is conducted in a fair and open manner, to understand potential drivers of illegal gambling, and to ensure that industry practices are not having an adverse impact on the effectiveness of regulation.”
Jim Munro is a betting industry and gambling expert who has been a national newspaper journalist for over 30 years, predominantly at The Sunday Times and The Sun, where he wrote a weekly soccer betting column. Jim also worked on the launch of Virgin Bet with Gamesys and was subsequently head of editorial at LiveScore, the sports media and betting group.
