Scratch Card

What is Scratch Card?

The group highlighted potential risks posed by Google’s organic search features beyond paid advertising, which include autocomplete and suggested queries. 

Using data collected primarily through Chrome’s incognito mode to exclude personalised search histories, the KVA identified several autocomplete and pre-fill search queries that directly suggested illegal gambling platforms to users.

Examples included phrases like “online casino zonder Cruks” (online casino without CRUKS, the Dutch self-exclusion registry for problem gamblers) and “beste online casino buitenland” (best online casino abroad).

How to play Scratch Card

“The largest black market operators have scaled to create recognisable brands with traffic that can compare to domestically licensed operators,” the report’s authors wrote. “The top group of sites by common owner has a 12% share of traffic, while the largest single brand has 10%.”

Beyond offering crypto payment solutions, a number of black market operators are licensed in “light touch” offshore jurisidictions which use opaque offshore operating structures to help to obscure company ownership and make local enforcement against these companies complex, the report noted.

By comparison, the long tail of smaller black market sites rely heavily on affiliates to generate traffic.

About Scratch Card

Several operators have announced shop closures over recent months, including Entain and Flutter, citing a rising tax burden.

Online casino games remained the largest segment of the remote market, generating £5.7 billion ($7.6 billion) in GGY, with slots accounting for £4.8 billion ($6.4 billion) of that total.

Remote sports betting generated £2.4 billion ($3.2 billion), led by football at £1.2 billion ($1.6 billion) and horseracing at £769.3 million ($1.03 billion).