Black Market
Play that is expressly illegal in the player's jurisdiction — prohibited supply, often enforced via blocking and payment controls.
Play that is expressly illegal in the player's jurisdiction: prohibited supply into markets that ban it (online casino in Australia, virtually everything in China), or unlicensed supply into licensed markets evading the local regime.
The second kind increasingly dominates regulatory debate: every licensed market measures its channeling rate — the share of play that stays onshore — and tax rises, stake limits and advertising bans are all argued over their effect on it. A licensed market with poor channeling has rebuilt its black market by other means.
Enforcement against black-market supply has diversified well beyond prosecution: Australia's ACMA directs ISPs to block listed sites; Italy's ADM blocks unlicensed domains at the network level; Germany's GGL pursues operators and — through B2B pressure — their suppliers; the Netherlands' KSA sanctions platform providers serving unlicensed sites. The supply chain, not just the storefront, is now the target.
The measurement question shadows every policy debate: a licensed market's black-market share is, by definition, hard to count, and industry and regulator estimates diverge sharply. What is not disputed is the direction of the relationship — every tax rise and product restriction in the licensed offer changes the relative attractiveness of the unlicensed one. Channelling is the number that keeps the argument honest.
This atlas touches the black market mostly through enforcement entries in the change tracker: blocking orders, supplier sanctions, advertising prosecutions. They are worth following because enforcement intensity is a regime's revealed preference — a market that raises taxes while policing supply lightly has chosen a different balance from one that pairs every restriction with blocking and B2B pressure, even if both publish identical responsible-gambling rhetoric.