The industry faces mounting regulatory pressure while mobile betting explodes. Smart operators are discovering that AI-powered player protection delivers both compliance and profit.
Gaming's transformation from physical to digital has unleashed a compliance reckoning that artificial intelligence (AI) is uniquely positioned to solve. What was once viewed as costly player protection requirements is becoming a source of competitive differentiation and customer loyalty—but only for operators who understand how to bridge responsible gambling innovation with commercial viability through AI-powered solutions.
The European gaming market is expected to grow year-on-year at 3.5% to €127.2 billion in 2025, with a projection to reach €149.2 billion by 2029. Mobile devices dominate the online gambling landscape, generating 58% of online revenue in Europe in 2024, up from 56% in 2023, according to research from the European Gaming and Betting Association (EGBA). The EGBA projects that online gambling bets placed on mobile devices will account for 67% of online gaming revenue by 2029.
The gaming market in the United Kingdom (UK) generated £15.6 billion in gross gambling yield during 2023-2024, up 3.5% year-on-year, according to the Gambling Commission. This growth is in line with the Europe wide trend. It also found that there are 13.5 million active online accounts in the UK.
The demographic shift toward younger users amplifies these challenges. The 18-24 age group reported the highest use of mobile phones for gaming at 76%, representing the most mobile-engaged segment of players. In-play betting participation was highest among those aged 18-24 (77%), compared to only 23% for those aged 65 and over, indicating that younger users tend to gravitate towards more immediate and potentially riskier betting formats.
This trend matters because young people are known to be at risk of problems with gambling because of cognitive immaturities, such as illusions of control over outcomes, and a poor understanding of statistical probability. In adolescence, executive function is not yet fully developed, which can increase impulsivity and risk-taking behaviors. At this age, the brain is still developing and emotion and logic aren't fully formed, making young adults more likely to take risks or act impulsively than traditional casino demographics.
Indeed, beneath the impressive growth figures lies a troubling reality. Mobile platforms have made gambling instantly accessible, but this convenience comes with unprecedented challenges. The UK government's white paper from 2023, "High stakes: gambling reform for the digital age", acknowledges this head-on. It demands changes to how operators protect players while maintaining commercial viability—a seemingly impossible balancing act that AI makes achievable.
The key insight driving smart operators forward is recognizing that customer acquisition costs continue to climb. At the same time, player retention becomes increasingly valuable, creating economic pressure that aligns perfectly with AI-powered responsible gambling objectives.
Mounting pressures reshape operational requirements
The smartphone revolution has fundamentally altered how people gamble. Every mobile becomes a potential portal to instant wagering. Younger demographics exhibit the highest engagement with mobile platforms, presenting distinct risk profiles and behavioral patterns. They expect seamless, frictionless experiences. They engage across multiple platforms simultaneously. Most critically, they require intervention strategies tailored to digital-first behavior.
The societal costs of getting this wrong are staggering. Public Health England for example estimates that gambling harm costs society around £1.27 billion annually through healthcare, criminal justice, and welfare expenses. The local Office for Health Improvement and Disparities estimates up to 500 gambling-related suicides per year—about 10% of all suicides nationally. These numbers reflect individual tragedies and systemic failures that create compelling business cases for prevention extending well beyond regulatory compliance.
Traditional harm detection approaches typically identify problems only after significant damage has occurred. However, AI systems analyze behavioral patterns, spending velocity, session duration, and cross-platform activity to predict risk before the problem escalates. This predictive capability transforms harm prevention from reactive damage control into proactive customer care.
The digital environment also creates new vulnerabilities that threaten the integrity of player verification systems. Deepfake technology continues to advance rapidly, with global instances surging from 500,000 in 2023 to an estimated 8 million in 2025, enabling fraudsters to create synthetic media by combining stolen personal data with AI-generated video and audio, thereby overwhelming traditional identity verification approaches.
This represents more than a security issue: it undermines the foundation of responsible gambling by making accurate player identification increasingly difficult. Industry analysis shows deepfakes pose significant threats to gambling operators, while synthetic ID fraud creates particular challenges for KYC (know-your-customer) processes. Recent Gambling Commission enforcement actions demonstrate how inadequate fraud detection systems create both operational and financial risks for operators.
Government roadmap creates AI implementation requirements
The gambling white paper's six priority areas effectively mandate the deployment of AI across critical operational functions. Rather than optional enhancements, these represent requirements that traditional approaches cannot address effectively.
Online protection demands operators conduct "financial risk checks" with triggers halved for 18 to 24 year olds while remaining "frictionless" for players. This requirement becomes achievable through AI models integrated with open banking technology that analyze financial health without creating customer inconvenience. The technology can assess income patterns, spending behaviors, and existing debt obligations in real-time while maintaining the seamless experience that mobile users expect.
Regulatory reporting must enable real-time compliance while detecting fraud through AI-generated reports and AI-powered detection systems. The emphasis on real-time reflects regulators' growing frustration with retrospective compliance approaches that identify problems only after harm has occurred.
Responsible advertising needs AI monitoring of campaigns to ensure compliance with evolving standards across multiple jurisdictions simultaneously. As marketing restrictions tighten and vary by region, manual oversight becomes both expensive and error-prone.
These requirements create a technology challenge that only AI can address at the scale and speed that modern gambling operations demand. Traditional manual processes cannot deliver the combination of accuracy, speed, and customer experience that regulators now expect.
Proven AI applications map to High Stakes priorities
Recent implementations across various industries reveal AI's transformative potential when applied to the specific challenges of gambling. The following examples illustrate both technical feasibility and commercial viability, mapping directly to some of the High Stakes white paper's priorities:
Online protection and financial risk assessment:
• Signal, developed and launched by Credit Kudos in 2021, is an AI model using open banking data to assess financial health with greater accuracy than traditional credit scoring enabling operators to conduct mandatory affordability checks without causing customer friction.
Enhanced responsible gambling and harm detection:
• BetBuddy, cited by UK Parliament for tech-assisted harm reduction, uses machine learning algorithms to predict harmful gambling behavior across multiple platforms.
Regulatory reporting and compliance:
• The Bank of Singapore's implementation of generative AI for compliance reporting demonstrates how AI streamlines documentation preparation through automated data extraction, content generation, and human oversight validation. For gambling operators managing multiple jurisdictions, similar approaches enable real-time compliance reporting while reducing operational overhead.
Fraud detection and deepfake prevention:
• Intel and McAfee's Project Mockingbird addresses deepfake threats through real-time analysis, enabling verification during customer onboarding and transaction authentication.
Responsible advertising and marketing compliance:
• AI marketing campaign monitoring systems illustrate AI's potential for ensuring advertising standards across complex regulatory environments.
Cross-industry experience provides the crucial bridge
The challenge facing gambling operators requires understanding how to implement AI responsibly within complex regulatory frameworks. This is precisely where Cognizant's cross-industry experience becomes the crucial bridge between responsible gambling innovation and commercial viability.
Real-time fraud detection, financial health assessment, and regulatory reporting capabilities developed for financial services oragnisations address core requirements outlined in the white paper. Understanding open banking integration, data privacy requirements, and technical architectures for processing sensitive financial information while maintaining regulatory compliance.
Understanding frameworks governing chance-based entertainment, responsible advertising requirements, and community benefit obligations in the lottery sector provides further insights. While lottery differs from casino gambling, the regulatory sophistication and social responsibility requirements create valuable parallels for implementing responsible gambling.
