Gamstop Hits Record Self-Exclusions During the World Cup, Led by Under-25s

Britain's national self-exclusion scheme is seeing more people sign up than at any point in its history, and the 2026 World Cup is the reason. Gamstop recorded 12,236 new registrations in May, its busiest month on record, and reported a 16% year-on-year rise in sign-ups over the first half of the year. The charity expects July to eclipse May, following a pattern it has seen before: registrations surge after a major football tournament, or the moment England is knocked out.

The demographic behind the increase is the one regulators worry about most. Under-25s were the fastest-growing group of new registrants in the first half of 2026, up 26% year on year, and now make up almost one in three of all self-exclusions. That extends a trend Gamstop flagged in its FY25 report, which showed a 40% jump in self-exclusions by young people over the prior year. Gamstop framed the youth numbers as a sign of awareness rather than only of harm, saying under-25s are the most conscious about their online gambling behavior. Men continued to account for more than seven in ten new registrations, consistent with the scheme's data since it launched in 2018.

The tournament timing is explicit in Gamstop's own read of the data. "There is a real risk that people have increased their gambling during the World Cup and once the tournament is over, they might find it more difficult to stop or turn to online casino games and other forms of gambling," said Matt Burgiss, head of external affairs at the Gamstop Group, adding that self-exclusion gives people a way to take a break before habits set. Fiona Palmer, chief executive of the group, said the continued year-on-year rise shows users, particularly younger consumers, treat self-exclusion as a flexible tool, and that Gamstop's approach remains collaborative across the sector even as "the landscape has changed significantly in recent months."

The numbers behind the surge

May's spike sits on top of an already climbing base. In the six months to December 2025, Gamstop took 58,675 new registrations, an average of 319 a day, and by the end of that year 562,000 people had registered with the service since inception. The youth skew was visible then too: registrations from 16-to-24-year-olds rose 40% in the second half of 2025, and that age band made up 29% of new sign-ups. How long people lock themselves out varies by age. The five-year exclusion is the most popular option overall at 47% of users, and in December 2025 more than half of those choosing a minimum five-year term opted into auto-renewal for the first time, while the six-month option is most popular among 16-to-24-year-olds at 38%, a lighter commitment from the group signing up fastest.

Gamstop is mandatory infrastructure, not a voluntary add-on. Every operator licensed by the UK Gambling Commission for online play has been required to integrate with it since March 2020, so a single registration blocks a user across the entire licensed market at once. That is what makes a record month matter for the industry rather than only for the charity: each of these sign-ups is a licensed-market customer removing themselves from every regulated operator and affiliate at the same time, and the concentration among young men is the segment operators most want and regulators most scrutinize.

The post-tournament wave Gamstop is forecasting is also where the black market goes hunting. Excluded players remain a target for unlicensed "not on Gamstop" sites that market themselves precisely to people the scheme has locked out, an SEO-driven trade the UK has been trying to choke off, including hijacked legitimate websites repurposed to rank for black-market gambling terms and pressure on big tech to stop serving illegal gambling ads. For licensed operators and affiliates, a record self-exclusion month during a World Cup sharpens the compliance picture on two sides at once: it feeds the Gambling Commission's case for tighter marketing and affordability rules under its ongoing regulatory reforms, and it grows the pool of players the illegal sector will try to recapture the moment the final whistle blows. Gamstop said July's total is likely to set another record.