Flux

About Flux

Since then, annual advertising expenditure by licensed operators has grown substantially and is now estimated to be between £1 billion and £2 billion, accoridng to , the report said.

According to the committee, robust evidence now links gambling advertising to increased participation and associated harms. 

Committee Chair Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede highlighted that, since 2020, the growth of online marketing techniques and associated harms have shifted the debate substantially.

What is Flux?

“Why not use the dataset I already have on gambling sites to map the most problematic ones, identify how they are connected and build a deeper picture of the networks behind them?” That thought process eventually gave birth to Trace2Trace.

Trace2Trace is relatively new, but Madsen says its underlying dataset has already grown to around 620,000. And it continues to grow, highlighting the scale of illegal operations in the gambling industry.

“We receive around 7,000 domains a day on average through the lists we monitor, including new and cloned sites,” he explains.

How to play Flux

Using data collected primarily through Chrome’s incognito mode to exclude personalised search histories, the KVA identified several autocomplete and pre-fill search queries that directly suggested illegal gambling platforms to users.

Examples included phrases like “online casino zonder Cruks” (online casino without CRUKS, the Dutch self-exclusion registry for problem gamblers) and “beste online casino buitenland” (best online casino abroad).

KVA expressed concern over the potential manipulation of Google’s autocomplete function by unauthorised operators and websites primarily set up to redirect Dutch consumers to illegal gambling offers.