Study materials

What GAMSTOP is

GAMSTOP is a free, independent self-exclusion scheme for Great Britain. Someone who signs up is blocked from every UK-licensed online gambling operator for the period they choose. It exists for people who feel their gambling may be becoming harmful and who want a firm boundary rather than a personal resolution.

It is not a marketing tool or an optional integration. Participation is a licence requirement: every UK-licensed remote operator must connect to it and check customers against it.

How it works, step by step

1. Registration. The person registers, provides identity details — name, date of birth, address — and verifies who they are. They choose a period: 6 months, 1 year or 5 years. Activation can take up to 24 hours.
2. Blocking and enforcement. Every UK-licensed operator checks new registrations and logins against the GAMSTOP database. If the identity matches someone excluded, access is refused. Operators must also stop all direct marketing to that person.
3. During the exclusion. The person cannot use existing accounts or open new ones with UK-licensed operators. The exclusion cannot be shortened or cancelled once active.
4. After it expires. It does not lapse automatically — the person must contact GAMSTOP to have it lifted, and that takes a few days rather than being instant.

Limitations worth understanding

Two further points. It is not reversible during the term, which is deliberate — the friction is the protection. And it is not a complete solution on its own: it is normally used alongside device blocking software, bank gambling blocks and support services such as GamCare.

Self-exclusion from the user's side

Useful context for writing about it honestly — it is a serious commitment, not a soft setting.

What this means for our work

• Never market to a self-excluded person. One of the most serious compliance failures an operator can commit, and the obligation sits in the licence conditions.
• Be accurate about what "non-GamStop" means. Because integration is mandatory for UK licensees, a site not on GAMSTOP is by definition not UK-licensed. Never imply UK regulatory protection where it does not exist.
• Do not frame self-exclusion as an obstacle. It is a protection someone chose for themselves. Treating it as friction to be worked around is both a compliance problem and the wrong side of the argument.
• Signpost support. UK creative carries 18+ and a safer-gambling reference such as BeGambleAware.org as standard.

Proxies and VPNs

A proxy is a middleman for an internet connection. When you visit a site through one, the site sees the proxy's IP address instead of yours. A VPN does much the same thing for location, routing your traffic through another server.

The reason this comes up constantly in this industry is that IP address is what most websites and ad systems use to guess where a visitor is. If a site sees a Polish IP, it records a Polish visitor — regardless of where the person is actually sitting.

The analogy that makes it stick

Think of a proxy like a post office box: you write the letter at home, but it goes out with the post office's address on it. The recipient sees the post office, not your house.

Why it matters day to day

A page can look completely different depending on the country it thinks you are in — different language, different offers, sometimes a different page entirely. So checking how something appears in a given market usually means viewing it from an IP in that market, not from your desk.

PWAs — Progressive Web Apps

A PWA is a website built to behave like a mobile app. The user opens a link, gets an "Add to Home Screen" prompt, and from then on it launches full-screen with its own icon — no browser bar, and nothing downloaded from an app store.

How it works

1. The user opens the link on their phone.
2. The site is built with app-like technology — HTML, JavaScript and service workers.
3. The browser offers "Add to Home Screen".
4. Once added, it opens full-screen like a native app.
5. It can send push notifications, work offline, and remember a login.

Why this industry uses them

Two practical reasons. Updates ship instantly, with no store review cycle to wait on. And the major app stores restrict gambling apps heavily — allowing them only in particular licensed markets, or not at all — so a PWA is how many operators offer an app-like experience at all.

What cloaking means

Cloaking is showing one version of a page to an ad platform's reviewers and a different version to real users. The reviewer sees something clean and policy-compliant; the actual visitor is sent to the real offer. The point is to get an advert approved that would be rejected if the platform saw where it truly led.

The name is literal — the real destination is cloaked from the people whose job is to check it.

How it works, in concept

You do not need the technical detail to understand the idea. A visitor arrives, and a decision gets made about who they appear to be — an ordinary user, or a platform's automated reviewer. Based on that guess, they are shown one of two pages: a harmless one for the reviewer, the genuine offer for everyone else.

That is the whole mechanism. Everything else is just detail about how the "reviewer or real user" guess is made.

A worked example

Why it exists in this space

The major platforms — Google, Meta, TikTok — restrict or ban gambling adverts, and only allow them from operators licensed in the specific country being targeted. Cloaking is used to get around that: to slip an advert past review that the platform's own rules would otherwise refuse.

Why it is a line we do not cross

• It is a direct policy violation. Every major ad platform explicitly prohibits showing different content to their systems than to users. It is not a grey area in their terms — it is named and banned.
• The consequences are severe and permanent. Detection typically means an immediate, irreversible ban of the ad account and often the associated assets and domains — not a warning.
• It is deception, not optimisation. The entire technique depends on misleading the reviewer. That is a different thing from making a compliant advert perform better, and it is worth being clear about the difference.
• The compliant route is the real one. Advertising gambling on these platforms means holding the right licence for the market and following the advertising codes — the material on the UK market research tab. That is the version of this work that lasts.

The market in numbers

Useful for sizing any argument you make about the UK. Figures come from the source research and were current when it was written — check the Gambling Commission's own statistics before quoting them externally.

Who regulates what

Three bodies, and they are easy to confuse:

• UKGC — the Gambling Commission licenses and regulates operators, and requires all advertising to be socially responsible.
• CAP — the Committees of Advertising Practice write the advertising codes, including the gambling-specific rules.
• ASA — the Advertising Standards Authority enforces those codes across all media.

So: UKGC licenses the operator, CAP writes the advertising rules, ASA polices the adverts.

Advertising restrictions

The most important section here for anyone making content. An operator without a UK licence cannot advertise to UK consumers at all — that covers every form of marketing communication, not just paid ads.

• Paid platforms. Google, Meta and the other major platforms restrict gambling ads to UKGC-licensed operators. Paid search and social targeting UK audiences is licensed-only.
• Audience. No targeting of under-18s or other vulnerable groups — covering imagery, themes and tone, not just the targeting settings.
• Promotions. Bonuses and free bets must be clear, not misleading, with terms stated. Without a UK licence, offering them to UK residents is not permitted at all.
• Affiliates. Affiliates must check the operators they promote hold a UK licence. Promoting an unlicensed operator exposes the affiliate to regulatory action too.
• Sponsorship. Sponsoring UK teams, events or media is restricted to licensed operators.

Why offshore licensing exists

Curaçao is a common licensing jurisdiction because it is cheaper and less demanding than the UKGC. Operators there typically offer larger bonuses and faster onboarding, and often support crypto payments. The trade-off is the one above: they are not permitted to advertise to or target UK players, and their customers sit outside UK consumer protections.

Audience segments

The research divides UK players into recognisable types. Useful when a brief asks who something is for.

What people actually bet on

What the research says about UK players generally

• They are aware of regulation and expect operators to be compliant.
• They are tech-literate — convenience and a fast, clean experience drive choice.
• They increasingly value responsible-gambling tools, and treat their presence as a trust signal.
• They respond to transparent terms. Misleading promotions do measurable damage to trust.