Listen to this article:The Gambling Commission has published its 2026 Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Risk Assessment for the non-remote bingo sector, including bingo sites, and has left the overall risk rating for land-based bingo unchanged at Medium.
The assessment suggests that the Commission still considers land-based bingo to present a relatively limited inherent money laundering risk. However, it has also drawn attention to several areas where operators are expected to maintain particularly strict controls, such as customer monitoring, gaming machine play, and staff oversight.
Gaming machines are one of the main areas of focus. Between April 2024 and March 2025, they generated £424 million of the land-based bingo sector’s total £650.4 million Gross Gambling Yield, and the Commission has increased its assessment of the likelihood that machines could be used to launder criminal funds.
As noted, gaming machines are one of the clearest areas of concern identified in the 2026 assessment, and they are a very significant part of the land-based bingo business. One important change in the new assessment is an increase in the likelihood rating for the risk of gaming machines being used to launder criminal funds.
The Gambling Commission’s concerns centre around inadequate monitoring systems and the possibility of machines being used to convert cash into funds that could appear to have come from legitimate gambling activity.
This makes effective oversight increasingly important. While the overall risk rating for bingo has not changed, operators may face greater expectations around their ability to monitor machine play and identify activity that could indicate money laundering.
The Gambling Commission has also drawn attention to premises using ticket-in-ticket-out technology and automatic ticket redemption systems.
TITO systems allow players to receive a ticket representing the value of funds or winnings held on a machine, which can then be used elsewhere or redeemed. Automatic ticket redemption can further reduce the need for direct interaction with members of staff.
While these systems can make transactions more convenient, the assessment highlights the potential risk created when there is less staff oversight. The concern is that reduced interaction between customers and staff can make unusual patterns of activity more difficult to identify.
As a result, premises making use of TITO or automatic ticket redemption may need to pay particular attention to how customer activity is monitored and how staff respond when potentially suspicious behaviour is identified.
Membership systems are another important part of the Commission’s assessment. The regulator recognises membership arrangements as a useful control for identifying customers and monitoring their activity within a bingo club. For operators, this can provide a better idea of who is using the premises and make it easier to spot activity that appears unusual or inconsistent with normal play.
Premises operating without membership systems may therefore face additional risks because customers can potentially remain anonymous. This does not mean that membership alone removes money laundering risk. However, the latest assessment clearly recognises it as an important part of the controls available to operators.
For many traditional bingo clubs, membership has long been part of the way customers access and use a venue, so the Gambling Commission’s latest assessment is unlikely to result in big changes at the largest operators.
The Bingo Association described the publication of the new Gambling Commission assessment as a reminder that, while the sector’s overall risk level remains stable, expectations placed on operators are continuing to increase.
Operators need to be fully aware of what is happening within their premises, particularly around gaming machines and systems where customers can move or redeem funds with limited staff involvement.
Staff training is also important. Effective monitoring depends not only on the systems being used, but on employees understanding what they are looking for and knowing how to respond when something does not appear right. Essentially, very little is likely to change for players, but the gradual increase in demands on operators seems likely to continue.
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