Sanctioned? Fined? Banned? Not a problem if you’re a sports betting company eager to do business. Illegal bookmakers linked to Premier League clubs recently set up stalls at a gambling conference in London, right under the nose of the regulator which had just punished them.
By Philippe Auclair
At the beginning of July, the global gambling industry held one of its regular jamborees, iGBL!ve, at the Excel conference centre in London, with some 15,000 delegates attending the two-day event. So far, so ordinary. Those get-togethers are thirteen a dozen in the industry’s calendar, and, in fact, iGBL!ve lags some way behind similar events in terms of attendance, with some of them (ICE and SIGMA among others) drawing twice as many visitors or more. “It was fairly quiet, even a bit subdued compared to previous years”, one of the exhibitors told Josimar after the event.
Yet something set this edition of iGBL!ve apart. The conference took place on the home patch of the Great Britain Gambling Commission (GBGC), which recently took action against one of its most egregious (now ex-) licensees, Isle of Man-based TGP Europe. This was seen as a watershed moment in the relationship between the British regulator and the euphemistically-called “grey sector” of the gambling industry. “Live and let live” was the watchword until then, but not any longer – or so we were led to believe.
TGP Europe is a name will be familiar to Josimar readers, as it has featured prominently in our reporting into the links between English football clubs and illegal (*) Asian-facing sports betting operators over the past five years. TGP, which used the ‘White Label’ system to register domain names in Great Britain on behalf of illegal bookmakers, is known to have been the property of the Macau casino tycoon Alvin Chau, now serving an 18-year old jail sentence in China for fraud, money-laundering and being part of a criminal organisation among a number of other charges. There was nothing “grey” about TGP.
Attendees of iGBL!ve told Josimar that GBGC Director of Major Policy Projects Helen Rhodes delivered a short presentation on day one of the event, in which she stressed how the Commission had acted decisively to counter the abuse of the ‘White Label’ system by illegal, and even criminal operators. TGP was apparently not mentioned by name, but the message was clear enough. There was no need to dot the Is and cross the Ts in front of an audience for whom this had been headline news.
There was a catch, however: some of the exhibitors who paid tens of thousands of pounds to have a stand at the event (*) happened to be the very same brands the GBGC was so proud to have kicked out of the British gambling licensing system. They had set up stall right under the nose of the regulator which had supposedly put an end to their operations on British soil.
Floorplan of iGBL!ve at Excel, London, 2-3 July 2025
TGP client BC.GAME was there. The crypto casino, then registered in Cuaraçao and Leicester City FC’s main sponsor in the 2024-25 season, had to suspend its UK operation in November 2024 when declared bankrupt, as was revealed by Josimar. The company had failed to pay its customers and jumped before it was pushed out of the Caribbean island, only to immediately resurface with a different offshore licence, which they obtained in Anjouan. BC.GAME – illegal in continental Europe – widely advertises means to circumvent local regulations through online instructions manuals which are hosted on a number of mirror websites. It no longer has any legal status in the United Kingdom.
Neither does another TGP brand, Everton FC sponsor Stake.com, which stopped operating in the UK in March 2025, after it was investigated by the GBGC for a particularly tasteless publicity stunt which involved porn actress Bonny Blue on the steps of Nottingham University, where the “adult star” claimed that she had had sex with “barely legal” students there.
Both Leicester City and Everton carried on wearing shirts bearing the name of the now unlicensed BC.GAME and Stake.com and until the end of the 2024-25 season.
Even more remarkable was the presence of various other illegal operators who have never held any licence in the United Kingdom. As can be seen on the floorplans reproduced above, the BC.GAME stand was sandwiched in between two sister companies of the infamous Russian-Cypriot online casino (and partner of PSG, Barça and the African confederation) 1XBet. These sister companies are 22bet, another former regional partner of PSG which is particularly active in Africa, and Melbet, who were distributing cans of mineral water commemorating their new partnership with Juventus for the Africa and MENA regions, where the company operates illegally in territories such as Morocco. None of the staff working for those brands could be identified by their family names, as their business cards (when they could produce one) only mentioned their first names, most of which sounded Russian.
Melbet’s illegal Moroccan website, showing their partnership with Juventus, screenshot taken on 5 July 2025.
Another 1XBet avatar, Linebet, official partners of Ligue 1 AS Monaco for Africa and the Middle-East, was exhibiting just a few yards away. Mostbet, who are also linked to 1XBet, were not that far either. 1XBet themselves had their licence suspended by the GBGC in 2019 after a Sunday Times investigation showed they were offering odds on games involving minors, using porn for promotional services and illegally streaming football matches on their platforms.
1XBet-related brands which exhibited at iGBL!ve 2025
The cherry on the cake, however, was a display at the stand of B2B (business-to-business) Taiwanese tech provider Siraya Technologies, which listed some of the company’s clients.
These included illegal Asian-facing operators ManBetX (former partner of Wolves, Real Madrid and Serie A among others) and SBOBET, the sister brand of Fulham FC sponsor SBOTOP, whose White Label operator Celton Manx has just been hit with a 3.9 million pounds sterling fine by the Isle of Man regulator for making confetti out of money-laundering regulations. SBOTOP has now acquired a new offshore licence in a little-known Canadian First Nation reservation located in the province of New Brunswick.
But the name which sprang out was Yabo, another defunct TGP White Label brand, which is now operating as Kaiyun (Nottingham Forest’s main sponsor). Yabo, who used to be partners of Manchester United, PSG, Bayern and many, many others, was – still is – a criminal organisation which was the target of one of the biggest and most spectacular investigations carried out by Chinese police between 2019 and 2021, which led to the identification of 80,000 illegal Yabo agents in mainland China alone and nearly 4,000 arrests. As Josimar found out, Yabo was employing a British male model named Dean Hawkes to pose as its CEO. As revealed by a joint investigation led by US IT automation and security company Infloblox and Josimar, Yabo is also the mothership of other Asian-facing illegal brands well-known for their association with European football clubs, such as HTH, AYX, Leyu and dozens of others.
Yet here they were.
Josimar asked an industry insider how it was possible that companies and brands which are unlicensed in the UK and were the subject of regulatory action and criminal proceedings could possibly carry on promoting their business in Britain in such blatant fashion. His response was short, swift and to the point.
“It is because they don’t give a fuck”, he said.
Josimar sent a list of detailed questions to Clarion Gaming, the organisers of iGBL!ve in London, and to the Great Britain Gambling Commission. Clarion Gaming did not respond. The GBGC replied by providing us with “background information” (“There is no offence of advertising unlicensed remote gambling. The offence under the Gambling Act 2005 is the advertising of unlawful gambling. The gambling becomes unlawful when it is not licensed by the Commission, and it is made available for use by consumers in GB”), but did not address the specific points raised by Josimar.
(*) Josimar uses the definition of “illegal sports betting” as agreed on by the 43 countries which have signed the Macolin Convention, which include Norway and the United Kingdom.
(*) Those figures are not made public, but an industry source who had exhibited at iGBL!ve in the past told Josimar that a small, 8 sq. metre stall would cost over 10,000 pounds, staff passes included. Bigger stalls such as Stake’s spectacular display, complete with Formula 1 car, would cost many times that sum.
