This article is an opinion piece by Lee Hills, CEO of leading iGaming regulatory advisory service SolutionsHub.
I love the series Boardwalk Empire, an HBO series set in Atlantic City during the US Prohibition era. It follows Nucky Thompson, part politician, part gangster, who thrives precisely because alcohol has been demonised and outlawed.
As with all HBO series, it is wonderfully shot, tells an amazing story and has the grit of truth and reality running through it. The truth I want to focus on here is that people expect rights and choice. When a popular product is banned outright, demand does not magically disappear. It migrates, and the people who step into the gap are not usually the ones you would choose to regulate anything.
The US experience with alcohol prohibition is well documented. Attempts to suppress alcohol use by banning production and sale led to a lucrative black market, a rise in organised crime, more dangerous, unregulated alcohol, and a collapse in tax revenues that had previously funded public services.
Prohibition was introduced in the name of public health and family welfare. It created speakeasies, bootlegging empires, turf wars and a parallel illicit economy with no oversight or control.
And this is the paradox that seems so obvious to me when I see fresh calls for blanket bans in other sectors or targeted prohibitions dressed up as consumer protection. The lesson from history is that when regulation removes choice, the risks become harder to manage and far more dangerous.
Predict the future
For those of us old enough to remember a world without social media, the modern discourse is deeply concerning. Dialogue is shaped by 30-second TikToks, instant outrage, and the dopamine hit of immediate gratification. Our societal fabric is stretched thin. Nuance is being replaced with binary choices, and calm reflection is rarely rewarded with airtime.
Yet, if you want to understand the future, you must begin by studying the past. History shows us again and again that when societies reach for blunt tools to solve complex problems, they seldom get the outcomes they intend. Prohibition is a clear and repeated example.
In business, looking to the past means examining how industries have matured over time. Even for disruptive technologies that fall outside traditional frameworks, precedent still matters. Patterns in regulatory developments, political oversight and public sentiment offer context that guides how new sectors mature.
When the policy instinct shifts from ‘regulate and shape’ to ‘prohibit and punish’, demand moves to channels that are harder to monitor. Enforcement costs rise, tax receipts fall, and harms often become more concentrated among the very people policy is meant to protect.
That is the lens through which I view the push by a small number of councils for gambling advertising bans.
Prohibition by stealth
The UK gambling sector is already under immense pressure. On one side sits an academic–advocacy ecosystem increasingly comfortable arguing for prohibition in all but name, often relying on heavily contested, selectively interpreted or methodologically flawed evidence. On the other side sits a Treasury that treats gambling as a bottomless tax base, layering on punitive rates that make regulated operators less competitive and push consumers toward the black market.
The recent Budget, one many in the sector refer to as Black Wednesday, will see Remote Gaming Duty jump from 21 per cent to 40 per cent from April 2026, alongside a new 25 per cent duty on online sports betting (excluding horseracing). Land based duties remain untouched, and bingo duty is scrapped.
In parallel, the political mood around advertising is hardening. Public health voices argue that a phased end to gambling advertising is necessary to prevent harm. However, as with any binary argument lacking nuance, this ignores the realities of real-world life.
Vulnerable people should not be targeted with gambling marketing, and standards around tone, placement and targeting need to be robust. However, there is a difference between collaborating to ensure appropriate safeguards are in place and that the package of safeguards remains relevant and proportionate, and attempting to erase a legal industry from public view.
When you put sharply higher taxes, expanding compliance obligations, and blanket restrictions on legitimate marketing channels together, the direction of travel becomes clear. Prohibition by attrition.
The vacuum
The problem is that markets do not evaporate just because local licence holders are squeezed.
If advertising for licensed operators is progressively removed, three things happen.
First, consolidation. The largest, most diversified incumbents can still buy visibility through physical outlets, sponsorship, and owned channels. It is the smaller, more specialised operators who become uncompetitive, leading to enforced consolidation, less completion and reduced competition, fewer innovators, and a market increasingly controlled by a small number of dominant groups.
Second, affiliates, influencers and content creators do not cease to exist. Many will pivot to whoever can still pay, including offshore operators who are happy to target UK consumers without a UK license and adhere to UK standards. We are already seeing pressure points here, with online channels heavily mixing licensed offers and black market products in the same feed.
Third, consumers who want to gamble will continue to search for options. If licensed brands are less visible, less able to communicate their safer gambling tools and less able to differentiate themselves, consumers will choose unregulated sites. That is the Boardwalk Empire lesson in modern form. A vacuum is an invitation.
Prohibition did not end alcohol. It made alcohol more dangerous and more profitable for the wrong people. The lesson for gambling is that if you want to change behaviour and reduce harm, you are more likely to succeed by shaping a visible, accountable, competitive, regulated market than by trying to make the industry disappear.
Protecting the regulated
Right now, the UK risks undermining the very operators it needs most.
Compliant, locally licensed businesses shoulder the cost of higher duty, invest in safer gambling infrastructure, subject themselves to UK regulatory scrutiny and help fund research and education.
Yet, policy is increasingly framed in a way that treats them as the problem, while leaving alternative supply routes, from offshore websites to anonymous crypto casinos, largely untouched.
If we continue down a road of higher taxes, broader advertising restrictions and narratives that start from the assumption that the regulated industry is inherently predatory, we should not be surprised if capital, talent and innovation move elsewhere.
A more sustainable path is available. It would include clear, evidence-based limits on advertising around minors and vulnerable groups; high standards for transparency, tone and safer-gambling messaging across all marketing; tax policy that recognises the difference between a healthy regulated market and a shrinking, fragile one; and investment in behavioural analytics and Markers of Harm to ensure early, effective intervention.
If the goal is to reduce gambling-related harm, protect vulnerable people and retain the benefits of a regulated, taxable industry, then prohibitionist instincts should be treated with caution.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the SiGMA News editorial team.
Subscribe HERE to SiGMA’s Top 10 News countdown and SiGMA’s weekly newsletter to stay up to date with all the latest iGaming News from the biggest iGaming community in the world and benefit from subscriber-only offers.
