SBC Leaders speaks to Betting & Gaming Council CEO Grainne Hurst about the impact of UK tax rises and the rising tide of challenges facing the gambling industry
Grainne Hurst is a stronger character than many people probably realise – she needs to be.
The Chief Executive officer of the Betting & Gaming Council spoke to SBC Leaders for its Hot Topic feature on the role of industry lobbyists and the battles being waged by her and her counterparts at the American Gaming Association, iDEA and Swedish lobby group BOS.
However, the wide-ranging interview with Hurst warrants a wider airing given the increasingly fraught atmosphere surrounding regulation and taxation in the UK.
The UK gambling industry is emerging from a bruising battle over taxation, which sparked the departure of her erstwhile chair and predecessor as CEO, Michael Dugher. She has been thrown from that losing battle into a furious row over affordability checks – which seems to have become the regulatory straw that broke the industry’s back – while simultaneously dealing with an emboldened black market, fake news, dodgy research and a never-quiet anti-gambling lobby.
“It’s our role to basically represent the industry to the best of our ability,” she says, “to bring the evidence and the real world experience from our members into those policy discussions.”
That sounds straightforward enough. In practice, it increasingly resembles trench warfare.
The tax battle that couldn’t be won
The interview takes place a few months after the UK government’s controversial gambling tax increases, a policy fight the BGC lost despite months of campaigning. Hurst is philosophical about the experience.
“The most important part of the job is making sure, to the best of our ability, that policymakers understand how the regulated sector works and also what the consequences of taking particular political decisions are going to be,” she says. “Obviously, our aim is to inform those decisions so that they’re made from a position of knowledge and an evidence-based position, but ultimately they’re going to take the decision they take.”
That may be the defining challenge of lobbying in 2026. Trade bodies can present data, commission research and organise campaigns, but political decisions are often driven by optics, ideology and fiscal necessity.
Hurst admits the BGC has spent considerable time reflecting on the tax campaign and whether different arguments might have landed more effectively.
“We focused very heavily, given that it was a Treasury decision, on the economic arguments,” she explains. “What the industry brings to UK PLC, but also what the negative impacts of any disproportionate tax increases would be to the Treasury at large.”
Those arguments centred around jobs, tax receipts, high street closures and the black market. Looking back, however, Hurst wonders whether the industry relied too heavily on economics.
“In hindsight, should we have brought some less economic experience into those debates? Whether that was via colleagues or customers? Maybe a bit less on the economics and balancing it out a bit more with some of the social impacts.”
It is a revealing moment. After years of macho posturing from the BGC and its predecessor organisations, a leader who can confidently speak about mistakes and uncertainty is one who is more likely to learn and will be better equipped to deal with the industry’s multiple challenges.
“Would it have made a difference? It’s always hard to tell with these things because at the end of the day, it was very much a political decision that the government took because they have a black hole to fill and we were one element of trying to plug that gap.”
The BGC is now tracking the impact of the tax rises across its membership, monitoring sponsorship cuts, marketing reductions and potential job losses. Hurst points to early examples already visible in racing sponsorship.
“We said that was inevitable,” she says. “There will be job losses, I’m sure, as businesses make efficiency savings. There are going to be high street closures. The impacts are real.”
The only show in town
When we speak, Hurst describes the black market as “the only show in town for the next 12-18 months and probably beyond,” but that was before affordability checks emerged as the pressing issue of the day.
One senses that the war of words over affordability checks reveals an industry that is losing faith with its regulator as its struggles to cope with the tax changes and the burgeoning black market, which Hurst recalls growing from 2% of the entire gambling market, to 4% and then to 6%, “and I think now it’s edging up towards the 10% mark”.
For lobbyists, the black market issue is particularly frustrating because you would think it would be an issue that industry, regulator, government and even campaigners could agree on.
“The fact that the government said in the Treasury documents that they accept – as a result of the tax rises – that £500m is going to go into the black market and that’s just the price of doing business for them on this. It’s absolutely insane,” Hurst says.
She pauses before adding: “I never thought that in a government document in black and white you would read that they are accepting and almost fine with the fact that half-a-billion quid is going to the illegal market.”
Hurst repeatedly returns to the tension between regulation and channelisation.
“There is a lot of friction now in the regulated sector as a result of regulatory changes,” she says. “Now the offering is going to look and feel worse because of the tax changes. Customers are very savvy to those changes and they can see it a mile off and when they don’t like it they vote with their feet.”
She describes a marketplace where legal operators are constrained by regulation while illegal operators freely offer larger bonuses, fewer restrictions and higher staking limits.
“If you’re an unassuming customer or potentially a professional gambler, why wouldn’t you be attracted to that?” she asks.
Google WTF?
The BGC is engaged in constructive conversations with the Gambling Commission about the streamlining of regulations, which have layered up and possibly overlapped in recent years. We await on the outcome of those discussions – amid the increasingly fraught debate over affordability – but there is one issue on which both sides are completely aligned.
Gambling Commission Executive Director Tim Miller has repeatedly spoken out about the unwillingness of Big Tech to help with the battle against the black market and Hurst couldn’t agree more.
“You can go on to Google and type in ‘not on GamStop casino’ or ‘not on GamStop betting’ and a load of results come up freely accessible,” she says. “My eight-year-old could do it.”
Worse still, she says people actively seeking help are being directed towards illegal alternatives.
“If somebody’s wanting to self-exclude because they’re having difficulty, they go to a search engine, type in GamStop, it is the first result that comes up, but the second result is ‘not on GamStop casino’.”
For Hurst, this underlines the evolving nature of lobbying itself. The BGC is no longer simply engaging with politicians and regulators; it is also pressuring search engines, advertisers and payment providers.
“We really do need all of the internet service providers and the advertisers to actually stop the ease of access,” she says. “Keyword searches can be blocked.”
Selective memory
The political environment, meanwhile, continues to grow more hostile.
One of the more uncomfortable moments in recent months came during Hurst’s appearance before a House of Commons select committee, where MPs challenged her on gambling-related harm. At one point, Hurst seemed to argue that no social harm comes from gambling and at that point, she lost the room. MPs who had – until that point – been relatively supportive of her points about job losses and so on, scoffed. They were incredulous.
“The point that I was trying to make is that for the vast majority of people, 22.5m people who like to have a flutter every month, they do so as part of their leisure and entertainment and they do it responsibly and safely and sustainably,” she says.
She acknowledges that some consumers are vulnerable and points to the industry’s investment in safeguards.
“We’ve been doing a lot of that because we appreciate that some people are at risk,” she says. “But that therefore doesn’t in my mind lead to the fact that you can say that gambling per se causes social harms.”
She accepts that maybe nuance did not land with her audience.
“I fully accept and appreciate that some people are at risk and that’s why we have protections in place for them, but the vast majority of people enjoy gambling responsibly, which is why I took the line I took in the Select Committee and I still stand by it.”
Again, it highlights the communications challenge facing lobbyists today. Data, nuance and proportionality are increasingly difficult to convey in highly charged political settings.
One battle after another
The BGC also faces criticism from within the industry. Some argue the organisation has not done enough to challenge anti-gambling narratives in academia and public health.
Hurst rejects the idea that the BGC has remained silent.
“We have responded to most of those from memory in pointing out the inaccuracies,” she says, pointing out that they have been working with “the absolute guru on this stuff”, Dan Waugh of Regulus Partners on it.
Still, she accepts there is always more to do.
“There’s a big piece of work for us to do in overcoming that hurdle,” she says later in the interview, discussing public perceptions of gambling.
That reputational challenge may ultimately be the hardest aspect of the job.
“I think we just need to talk a bit more positively about the benefits that the industry can bring, the views of the consumers, what it is they like about it, why they like it,” Hurst says. “Because it’s a legal regulated industry which tens of millions of people enjoy.”
Yet even as she says it, she acknowledges the practical difficulty.
“It’s hard to do when you’re firefighting lots of other stuff on tax or regulation. You kind of have to prioritise your workload.”
That single sentence perhaps best captures the state of modern lobbying. As we say our goodbyes, Hurst mentions she’s off to parliament to talk about financial risk assessments. And thus began her next big fire to try and snuff out.
You can read more about that challenge here, as SBC Leaders continues the conversation with Hurst and her counterparts at the American Gaming Association, iDEA and Swedish lobby group BOS.
This interview was carried out by Steve Hoare, SBC Leaders and Player Protection Hub editor.
