UK gambling businesses should be ready for additional costs due to the recently finished consultation by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport regarding Gambling Commission’s financing. As reported by the Gambling Commission, the consultation results have been published on 30 June 2026.
Namely, licensing fees will grow by 25%. Yet, the specific impact will depend on the licensing category because new ones are being added for most types of licences. To figure out how the changes will affect you, it is necessary to review the annexes to the Government’s response document.
This update is not related to online casinos or sports betting operators only. The Gambling Commission has emphasized that there will be no change in the fees of societies lottery, but a new calculation system of fees will be implemented for non-remote general betting limited licence holders. Personal licences fees are going to increase by 25%.
According to GOV.UK, the new fees are going to be applied starting from 1 October 2026. The consultation itself has run from January to March 2026 and collected 47 responses from gambling operators and their representatives.
From a gambling business perspective, this news is important as it adds one more cost to the list of expenses gambling businesses have to deal with at the time of increased regulatory requirements and higher taxes. The Gambling Commission has stated that in the upcoming weeks, all operators will be notified about their revised licensing categories.
From an iGaming market perspective, the trend is obvious: the regulation gets more expensive for operators and they need to allocate additional money for the purposes of compliance. For New Zealanders interested in the customer-facing part of online gambling, you can also start from our real money online roulette guide.
In yet another instance that proves how big players within the gambling world now face increased pressures, Evoke has agreed to undergo a £243 million takeover. Besides illustrating the growing pressures on gambling firms, the proposed take-over demonstrates just how much the market is bound to change due to the combination of strict regulations, taxes, […]
The gaming software provider, Pragmatic Play, has expanded its range of slots by releasing a new sweet title called Candy Rush. This is an amusing game that definitely does not try to pretend that it is something else. Bright graphics, candy symbols, tumbling mechanics and 7×7 pay grid make it more of a casual than […]
New Zealanders deposited an estimated NZ$1.36 billion with offshore online gambling operators, according to a Department of Internal Affairs-commissioned analysis of transactions spanning October 2023 to September 2025. It’s the clearest data-led picture of the market that this week’s newly-opened license framework is designed to disrupt – and bring onshore – and the research, carried […]
Sophia Novakivska