A new survey from GamblingNews.uk has found that 68% of British punters believe UK bookmakers use anti-money laundering (AML) and responsible gambling checks as a pretext to void winning bets or delay payouts. Of the 316 bettors surveyed, 215 said they believe operators exploit regulatory red tape and welfare checks specifically to avoid honouring winning bets.
The survey also found a notable erosion of trust in the regulated market: 24% of respondents said they view unregulated platforms — including prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi, and non-GAMSTOP casinos — as more reliable when it comes to paying out winnings than licensed UK operators, despite the far weaker consumer protections these platforms offer.
Roughly a third of those surveyed (31%) admitted to having bet on unregulated sportsbooks or casinos within the past 12 months.
The findings land amid growing scrutiny of how compliance checks are applied in practice. Over the past two years, the Gambling Commission has pushed operators to strengthen financial risk assessments around large deposits, rapid staking increases, and big wins.
Regulators maintain the checks are largely frictionless and distinct from full affordability assessments, designed to catch suspicious activity, not to judge what customers can afford to gamble.
In practice, though, operators face an inherent conflict: firms obligated to flag suspicious financial activity also stand to benefit from slow-walking payouts. A review opened under an AML banner can function as a de facto stalling tactic once a customer wins big, with accounts frozen and documentation demanded on no fixed timeline.
Because the process isn’t transparent, customers often can’t tell whether a hold is a legitimate compliance flag or a discretionary decision.
Responsible gambling interventions carry similar ambiguity. Operators are required to act on signs of problem gambling, but the triggers for intervention are broadly defined and left mostly to their own judgement — discretion critics say has, in some cases, been used to retroactively withhold winnings already earned, reframing a payout dispute as a welfare issue.
The Gambling Commission’s own compliance data offers some support for that scepticism: roughly a quarter of firms assessed recently fell short of a satisfactory rating on customer interaction, affordability, and AML controls.
