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What is Chicken & Egg?
The land-based gambling sector, comprising adult gaming centres (AGCs), betting shops, bingo halls and casinos, produced £4.9 billion in GGY over the year, marking a 1.1% yearly increase.
However, the UK’s physical estate shrank, with overall licensed gambling premises falling by 2% to 8,081.
Betting shops declining for the twelfth consecutive period, standing at 5,617, a 3.6% decrease representing a loss of 208 shops year-on-year.
What is Chicken & Egg?
Helios, a specialist consultant in gambling web traffic, analysed the number of black market websites actively marketing across the 28 markets included in the report, between March and May.
This data was cross referenced with SimilarWeb traffic analysis to confirm the scale of activity. In some markets, the number of illegal sites being actively marketed was much higher than those that have local licences to operate.
This was true of France, Portugal, Netherlands, Germany, Cyprus, Belgium, Spain, among others.
What is Chicken & Egg?
Kemorwale said Botswana needed to modernise oversight as the sector developed, including through a central electronic monitoring system and stronger enforcement capability. “Truth be told, this industry is evolving as the sun rises. You snooze, you lose,” Kemorwale said. He added that the Authority still relies on outside specialists for some technical regulatory work because domestic expertise is limited.
Illegal betting remained a central enforcement concern. In December 2025, the Gambling Authority and Financial Intelligence Agency were reported to be investigating eight foreign-based betting websites allegedly using local proxies to operate in Botswana.
Authorities were also reported to be working with communications and financial-sector bodies to restrict access to illegal platforms and disrupt associated payment channels.
