UKGC Study: Ethnic Minority Gamblers Face Higher Harm Rates

A new Gambling Commission study has found that people from ethnic minority backgrounds in Great Britain are more likely to suffer serious harm from gambling than white players, even though they gamble less overall. This roundup also covers TikTok’s reminder that gambling promotion remains banned on its platform, a Dutch regulatory move against a slot supplier whose games turned up on illegal sites, and a Swiss report exposing gaps in age checks at betting outlets – all stories about how vulnerable groups are protected, or not, across different gambling channels.

UKGC finds ethnic minority gamblers suffer disproportionate harm

The UK Gambling Commission published its report, Gambling behaviour and harm among people from different ethnic groups, on 27 October 2026.

It draws on three years of the Gambling Survey for Great Britain, from 2023 to 2025, giving researchers a large enough sample to examine White, Mixed or Multiple, Asian, Black and Other ethnic groups separately for the first time.
The analysis was carried out by
specialists at NatCen and the University of Glasgow, drawing on three waves of the Gambling Survey for Great Britain covering 2023, 2024 and 2025.

The headline finding is a paradox:
people from ethnic minority backgrounds gamble less overall than White participants but report higher problem gambling scores and far more adverse consequences.
On the Problem Gambling Severity Index,
the proportion of people with problem gambling, defined as a score of 8 or above, ranged from 1.9% among White respondents to 7.7% among those of Mixed or Multiple ethnic background.
When lottery-only players are excluded,
ethnic minority participants reported higher engagement in most non-lottery gambling and played across a wider range of activities, despite gambling less overall.

Encouragingly,
ethnic minority participants were more likely to seek help regarding gambling,
though a related summary noted that
support use remained below the level of need indicated by the findings.
For now,
the Commission has not announced new rules in response to the report,
meaning there’s no immediate change to deposit limits, affordability checks or other safer-gambling tools. But the study adds to a growing body of evidence the Commission may draw on when shaping future player-protection policy, and it’s worth knowing that standard industry risk indicators may not capture harm equally across communities.

TikTok reaffirms total ban on gambling promotion

Away from the regulator, social platforms are facing their own scrutiny over gambling content.
Global social media giant TikTok has reaffirmed that promotion of gambling products in the TikTok Shop is strictly prohibited.
The restatement comes
amid wider scrutiny of social media platforms about gambling promotion, with operators, trade bodies and national regulators particularly preoccupied with illegal gambling.
Notably,
TikTok’s policy makes no distinction between legal and illegal gambling.
For UK players, this means you shouldn’t expect to see gambling products advertised or sold through TikTok’s shopping features at all, licensed or not – a stricter stance than platforms that simply restrict ads to licensed operators and age-verified audiences.

Dutch regulator targets game supplier over illegal-site content

In the Netherlands, the gambling regulator Ksa has taken an unusual enforcement step by going after a game supplier rather than an operator.
The Dutch regulator has used a binding instruction against a B2B game supplier, Endorphina, rather than an operator.

The order signals that suppliers serving licensed European markets now face scrutiny over where their content ends up.
This matters for UK readers because it points to a direction regulators elsewhere may take: holding the companies that build slot games accountable for where those games are played, not just the websites offering them. If UK enforcement follows a similar path, it could add a new layer of compliance pressure on the suppliers behind many familiar UK casino titles.

Swiss report exposes gaps in underage gambling checks

A separate study from Switzerland is a reminder that age-verification failures aren’t confined to online platforms.
The evaluation report found there is a substantial gap in youth protection at physical outlets,
with testers able to place sports bets despite being under age at a high proportion of locations checked. While this concerns Swiss betting shops specifically, it echoes long-standing concerns in Britain about age checks at both retail and online touchpoints, and underlines why UK rules increasingly lean on verified ID and account data rather than self-declaration alone.

The bigger picture

Taken together, these stories show regulators and platforms widening their focus beyond the headline rules on stakes and bonuses. The UKGC’s ethnic minority findings highlight that harm isn’t evenly spread across the population; TikTok’s and the Dutch regulator’s actions show scrutiny creeping into social media shopfronts and the supply chain behind games; and the Swiss findings are a reminder that age checks remain a weak point wherever gambling is sold. For UK players, the common thread is that protection increasingly depends on where you gamble and who is checking, not just what the headline rules say.

Sources

• Gambling.com – UKGC: Gambling Harm Higher In Ethnic Minority Groups
• The Stratford Observer – Ethnic minorities in Great Britain gamble less but experience greater gambling harm
• SBC News – “You are prohibited” – TikTok makes gambling policy clear to users
• CasinoBeats – Ksa issues binding instruction to slot supplier Endorphina over games on illegal Dutch sites
• iGaming Business – Nearly half of underage testers place sports bets at Swiss outlets, new report finds