Our focus areas
- Be an in-market industry leader in tailored customer protection tools and processes
- Empower our people to support and protect our customers
- Prevent harm through education and responsible communications
- Promote research and share evidence-based learnings with the industry
Committed to Player Safety Framework
Our approach to safer betting and gaming is rooted in our culture and values and is embedded across our organisation. Our approach is tailored to the specific context of each market’s challenges and needs, and our
ambition is to prevent harm across our global footprint. Whilst each market is different, our overall framework, which we call “Committed to Player Safety”, is captured by three key principles.
We continue to monitor our player protection programmes, the results of which are reviewed by the Group Executive Committee and the Sustainability & Compliance Committee.
Fundamental to our overall approach to safer betting and gaming is the recognition that the job is never done, and we continuously evolve our approach based on local market conditions, customer feedback and other insights as well as when new evidence and technologies emerge to improve the experience and support
for our customers.
Engage
We engage with regulators, governments, industry and academics to deliver a positive and safe environment for our customers. By working with local stakeholders, and bringing our international expertise to bear, Entain maintains a balanced regulatory framework tailored to local market conditions.
A critical part of working with policymakers, regulators and law enforcement officials is our commitment to seek to reduce the scale of the illegal market, ensuring that our regulatory objectives are not undermined by unlicensed operators. The illegal gambling market is a competitive threat to licensed operators, a fiscal
threat to governments, but more importantly, a threat to customers – many of whom are unaware of the risks they run using unlicensed operators.
While regulated and licensed operators, such as Entain, are rightly held to a high standard of player protection – from knowing our customers, through anti-financial crime measures, to safer gambling
controls – illegal operators avoid these controls and the associated costs to their balance sheet and public safety.
Unlicensed operators do not pay gambling taxes. As tax and regulatory pressure grows on licensed operators, as it has in many markets in 2025, the lower cost base allows illegal operators to offer generous odds, pricing and promotions to players. Minimising the illegal gambling market is key to establishing sustainable, regulated betting and gaming markets. Entain supports the case for regulation that strikes the right balance of providing the best protection for customers, raising tax revenues for governments, while enabling licensed operators to be commercially competitive. Regulation that is too restrictive can make the offering of licensed operators less attractive, leading to growth in the illegal gambling market that, in some European territories, such as France, has reached up to 60% of gambling activity.
Protect
We take action to help protect our customers action from risks so that they can have a positive and safe experience using our products. Entain has invested in the research and development of proactive safer betting and gaming account monitoring tools designed to define risk levels to accounts (based on player activity, patterns, and behavioural trends) and to enable appropriate customer interactions. An example of this is ARC™ (“Advanced Responsibility and Care”), a tailored customer protection tool that monitors customer activity for risk factors. These tools have been jointly developed with independent third-party
experts such as Mindway AI.
Whilst processes will differ according to local regulations and codes, we will proactively impose gambling controls where players voice concerns or where we have identified a problem. We implement tools to mitigate risk such as setting financial limits, reality checks, time-outs, and, ultimately, temporary or permanent self-exclusion. Customers identified with the highest potential risk of gambling-related harm may undergo a further manual review, which could lead to conversations and interventions performed by a specialised team to further support players most at risk.
Tackling the Illegal Gambling Market
As a responsible operator, Entain is committed to combating the illegal gambling market and educating customers on its associated harms. In 2025, we launched a major programme to study, measure and map unlicensed online gambling and its supporting infrastructure across seven key global markets. Drawing
on more than 125 sources, this work consolidates existing evidence, identifies material gaps in current understanding, and strengthens the overall evidence base. The study assesses the size, scale and structure of the illegal gambling market, the effectiveness of different policy responses, and the economic and human harm caused by unlicensed operators. We intend to publish the full findings later in 2026, establishing a comprehensive reference point for policymakers, regulators and industry stakeholders.
Initial analysis indicates that the illegal online gambling market is both significant and expanding, accounting for an estimated 3–5% of activity in mature markets and more than 30–40% in certain restrictive jurisdictions in which Entain is present.
Early findings also suggest that illegal operators disproportionately target young and vulnerable consumers.
Our research reinforces that robust measurement requires a combination of web intelligence analysis and consumer survey data, as no single methodology can capture the full scale or complexity of the issue. It further highlights that there is no single solution. Effective suppression of the illegal gambling market will require sustained enforcement action against major illegal networks, alongside coordinated efforts to disrupt their marketing channels, payment mechanisms, commercial partnerships and wider technical infrastructure.
Using these insights, we will review relationships with suppliers that knowingly provide services to unlicensed operators, engage constructively with regulators and elected officials on best practice approaches, and, where appropriate, refer matters to law enforcement authorities.