What is Grey market?
The grey market refers to gambling offered to players in a country by operators that are not licensed there but are licensed elsewhere, operating in a legal gap rather than outright illegality.
An operator licensed in one jurisdiction may accept customers from a country where it holds no local licence, arguing that local law does not clearly prohibit it. Once a country introduces its own licensing system and enforces against unlicensed sites, such activity is generally described as black market.
The share of play going to unlicensed operators, sometimes called channelisation, is a key measure of a regulated market's success. The Netherlands, for instance, set channelisation targets when opening its online market in 2021.
Industry groups often argue that high taxes and strict rules push players to the black market, while regulators and campaigners dispute the scale of that effect. Measuring the grey market is difficult because unlicensed operators do not report data.
