From gambling addiction to black market intelligence: the story behind Trace2Trace
Jesper Kampmann Madsen, the founder of London-based tech firm Trace2Trace, is building technology to map the networks behind illegal gambling. Madsen, 35, and born in Denmark, knows what it means to be on the other side of the screen: as his decision to fight illegal gambling stems back to his own addiction, he tells iGB.
He was a teenager when he started gambling habitually. For several years, it remained entertainment. Then, when he was in his early twenties, came a large win on a foreign unlicensed gambling site: around €22,000.
“I remember gambling all of it back the same day because they couldn’t pay it out in full immediately,” he says.
The win completely changed his relationship with gambling. In Madsen’s words: “That jackpot was really the beginning of my gambling addiction.” It was an addiction that was propelled by a constant exposure to illegal sites, he explains.
The cycle eventually became extreme.
“At one point, I had only a few thousand euros left to gamble with, but then I won €180,000 in a single day. The next day I lost it all again,” he says.
“The day after that I won €150,000 – and lost that too.” That was the point at which he decided something had to change. “I thought to myself: This has gone too far.”
From addiction to technology
Madsen eventually sought help. His parents supported him and, at one point, took control of his finances. “It was embarrassing, but it was necessary,” he says.
The experience led the tech-savvy Dane to create Spilfri.nu, a blocking and support service for people experiencing gambling problems. The service is free for users, while supporters can pay a monthly fee to help monitor their progress. The service also extends to schools and educational institutions that want to ensure their students are not tempted by gambling when they are supposed to be studying.
The work he’s done through Spilfri.nu has also exposed him to a wider problem within the índustry.
“Our work is not driven by opposition to the gambling industry or to legal, licensed operators. Quite the contrary.”
The focus is on identifying illegal and unregulated gambling sites, operators that offer gambling services without the necessary licence, as well as sites that misuse, copy, or falsely refer to other operators’ licences.
“You can try to stop gambling, but then you go onto foreign gambling sites and crypto casinos and they keep appearing,” Madsen says.
He began watching regulators shut down individual gambling sites, only for mirror sites, cloned domains and replacement URLs to emerge in thier place. The problem, he concluded, was not necessarily the individual website. It was the network behind it.
“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.
Looking beyond the domain
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.
The system starts with domains that have already been identified by authorities. Trace2Trace then crawls them, looking for technical connections and similarities.
These include shared hosting, DNS clusters, source-code strings, tracking systems, logos and favicons. The system can also follow redirects and other mechanisms that may not be visible through a conventional web request.
A website might initially appear to be a normal local site, while behind it sits an iframe, JavaScript redirect or a chain of other pages leading to the actual gambling destination.
“You have to follow that chain,” Madsen says. In some cases, that chain can involve multiple layers. “A site might redirect ten times before reaching the actual destination.”
Madsen describes Trace2Trace as “a large search engine that continuously crawls websites”.
AI is used, but only towards the end of the process. First, the system gathers objective indicators; AI is then used to assess the overall pattern and probability of a connection. “We only provide evidence-based findings,” Madsen says. “We don’t say that something is a mirror site because we suspect it is. It is only reported when we are 100% confident there is a match.”
The black market challenge
The timing is significant. The illegal gambling market is attracting growing attention from regulators and the wider industry, while estimates of its size vary considerably depending on definitions and methodology.
A recent Fincord Intelligence report highlighted by the Betting and Gaming Council estimated that illegal online gambling generated around $50 billion in gross revenue globally in 2025. It estimated that around 5,000 operator structures were using more than 15,000 websites and apps.
Other estimates are considerably higher, illustrating how difficult the market is to measure. As an example, separate research from Gaming Compliance International put the value of unregulated online gambling at $5.9 trillion in wagering value in 2025, while estimating that unregulated operators accounted for 78% of global online gaming GGR.
Another report, commisisoned by Euromat, estimates that Europe’s black market has sustained a compound annual growth rate of 18% between 2019 and 2026, and will be worth up to €13 billion by the end of the year.
For enforcement authorities, however, the challenge is not simply estimating its size. It is keeping track of an ecosystem that can continually change domains, infrastructure and acquisition channels. That is where Madsen sees Trace2Trace fitting in.
One of its investigations concerns a specific globally reknown brand. Madsen says an initial scan identified around 1,600 domains, followed by another roughly 4,500 associated with this operator. That puts the number identified so far at around 6,000, although he believes the actual figure is considerably higher. “I think what we’ve found so far is only a small part of the overall picture,” he says. “I’m almost certain the real number is at least twice as high.”
Euromat’s report has suggested that a core group of 25 offshore operators are generating up to 64% of European traffic to the black market.
Aiding operators/suppliers in tracing their products
Madsen says investigators can also examine how sites appear from different jurisdictions. If a site is presented in a country’s local language, for example, that can indicate that the market is being targeted. The next question is whether the operator has the necessary licence.
The same intelligence can be useful to gambling companies and suppliers that want to monitor where their products are appearing. Madsen says Trace2Trace currently has a client that fits that description, although he cannot disclose its identity.
Madsen is clear that Trace2Trace does not shut websites down. Instead it tracks domains, identifies connections and documents changes so that regulators, enforcement authorities or other customers can use the information.
That distinction also informs his view of the wider battle. Asked whether illegal gambling can actually be defeated, his answer is: “No, but you can make it very difficult for them.”
The objective, he argues, is to make it harder for operators to simply replace a blocked domain with another one. “If they knew there was a tool that would find those new sites as well, they might become more cautious.”
It is a philosophy that sits within a broader shift in the industry’s approach to the illegal market. Domain blocking remains important, but regulators are increasingly looking at payments, advertising, affiliate and acquisition channels and cooperation across jurisdictions.
For example, on the role of pirate sports streaming in driving traffic towards illegal gambling, while regulators in markets such as Turkey are confronting large-scale unlicensed activity. The more fragmented and technically sophisticated the illegal market becomes, the more important the intelligence behind enforcement is likely to become.
A personal mission
Madsen knows from experience how difficult it can be to escape gambling when access remains readily available.
“I’m trying to address every stage: prevention, support for people who are already struggling, and then action against the illegal sites.”
He does not believe illegal gambling can simply be eliminated. But he believes it can be made harder to operate. That may be the more realistic role for companies such as Trace2Trace as the illegal market evolves: not replacing regulators or enforcement agencies, but providing the intelligence needed to see beyond the individual URL. For Madsen, the motivation remains deeply personal: “I know very well what gambling addiction can do to people.”
The emergence of his company along with a string of others reflects a growing need in the industry: as illegal operators become more adept at moving, cloning and disguising their online presence, enforcement may increasingly depend on understanding the deep workings of the networks behind the screen.