Golden Catch

How to play Golden Catch

Kevin O’Neal, a DOCV board member, argued the scale of the investigation calls the GGL’s broader black market estimates into question. He cited the regulator’s 2025 activity report, which put the 2024 share at 23% (€547 million in gross gaming revenue), against Nielsen data suggesting a share of around 56%.

The trade body has long been critical over the discrepancy between channelisation estimates made by the regulator, and other independent reviewers.

The DOCV reinforced its calls for a unified federal licensing regime for online casino games and stronger enforcement mechanisms against illegal operators. 

How to play Golden Catch

Burnham dealt another slight blow to the retail sector recently, by insisting he would scrap “aim to permit” for betting shops as well as insisting that AGCs will now need planning permission to function.

Done questioned how much more of a tax burden wealthy business owners in the UK should bear, noting: “They keep saying those with the broadest shoulders should be paying more tax. Well, how broad do my shoulders have to be? We paid £400 million in taxes as a family last year.”

He expressed a personal reluctance to emigrate outside of the UK, but acknowledged that his children might seek more favourable tax regimes abroad. 

How to play Golden Catch

Operators must maintain permanent mechanisms for age verification, self-exclusion, voluntary time and wagering limits, and information on the user’s own gambling behaviour. Self-exclusion must be effective with all authorised operators. 

The text also prohibits bets placed using credit cards, the use of predictive models to identify moments of greater vulnerability, and platform design mechanisms that hinder a conscious decision to stop betting, leave the service, or activate limits and blocks. Operators must maintain permanent alerts about compulsive gambling, indebtedness and asset loss, and adopt verifiable protocols for identifying risky behaviour.  

The proposal establishes criteria for classifying products according to their potential for harm. Among the characteristics considered are instantaneous or short-lived results, continuous repetition at short intervals, use of random mechanisms to determine the outcome, intermittent rewards, near-miss incentives, incentives to recover losses and features that make it difficult to stop betting or induce successive, impulsive, or increasingly valuable bets.