TLDR
- A Swansea University study found apparent privacy law breaches on 86% of 624 UK gambling sites checked.
- About two out of three sites collected user data before visitors gave consent.
- Some sites, including Hollywood Bets and Admiral Casino, offered no way to turn off tracking.
- Ladbrokes and William Hill were flagged for gathering data ahead of a consent choice.
- The UK’s privacy regulator has pushed for cookie compliance, but gambling sites lagged far behind other websites.
Researchers at Swansea University looked at 624 licensed gambling and betting websites operating in the UK. They wanted to see whether the sites followed data protection rules around tracking cookies.
The results showed problems on most sites checked. Researchers found signs of a data protection breach on 86% of the websites.
Consent Given Too Late or Not at All
In many cases, the issue started before users made any choice. About 24% of sites gave visitors no option to turn off tracking software at all.
Hollywood Bets, which sponsors Brentford FC, was one of the sites named in that group. Admiral Casino was also on the list.
A smaller number of sites skipped the consent step entirely. Around 2% offered no consent option whatsoever, including Dafabet, a sponsor of Celtic FC.
Other sites gave users a choice but designed it to favor tracking. Researchers said 60% of sites visually pushed users toward the option that shared more data.
Close to 30% of sites had the less private choice already selected by default. Nearly half of the sites, 47%, buried the option to reject tracking behind an extra click.
These setups are often called dark patterns. They are not automatically against the law, but they raise questions when paired with the high rate of apparent violations found in the study.
Data Moving Before Users Click Anything
Ladbrokes and William Hill were among the larger operators found to be collecting data before users gave consent. Some information gathering is allowed, such as checking whether a visitor is located in the UK.
Researchers said the bigger concern was that some of this data was sent to outside analytics companies used for marketing. Entain, which owns Ladbrokes, said the data it collects before consent is not used for advertising.
Evoke, which owns William Hill, did not comment on the findings. Hollywood Bets and Admiral Casino also did not respond to requests for comment.
The scope of the findings raises questions about the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK’s privacy regulator. The ICO says 95% of the UK’s 1,000 most visited websites now follow cookie rules.
Gambling sites, according to this study, do not match that trend. Ravi Naik, a legal director at AWO, a data protection group, called the results a sign of a wider compliance problem in the sector.
He said the ICO has not done enough to enforce the rules on gambling companies. The regulator has taken action before. In 2024, it reprimanded Sky Bet for sharing customer data with advertising companies without permission.
That case followed a complaint from the campaign group Clean Up Gambling. Sky Bet was not flagged in this new Swansea study.
Gambling companies have a financial reason to track how customers behave. Knowing when and how someone plays can help a company keep that person engaged with the site.
The ICO said it continues to check high traffic UK websites for compliance. It said it can take enforcement action when needed to protect people’s data rights.
For now, the gap between that goal and what researchers found on gambling sites remains wide.
