Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - How Unregulated Gambling Is Draining BILLIONS From the U.S. Economy | Ismail Vali

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

Ryan Alford sits down with Ismail Vali for a conversation that turns online gambling into a much bigger business and policy discussion. Ismail explains why he believes illegal and unregulated operators still dominate huge parts of the online gambling market, why legal operators have struggled to capture the economics people assumed they would, and how regulators remain behind the technology that changed the game years ago. He also lays out how offshore gambling, illegal streaming, and prediction-style products are creating a broader ecosystem that is harder to regulate and easier for consumers to stumble into than most people realize. Ryan brings the entrepreneur and free-market lens, pushing on consumer choice, overregulation, and where the line should actually be drawn. That back-and-forth makes this episode especially strong for listeners interested in business, policy, regulation, digital markets, and the unintended consequences of pretending a fast-growing market does not exist. Topics Covered The economics of illegal online gambling Why legal gaming markets are still underperforming expectations The role of offshore operators in value extraction Why some states still have no legal online gambling How prediction markets and other gray-area products fit in Why Ismail says the market is already here whether lawmakers accept it or not Consumer choice versus consumer protection Ryan Alford and Ismail Vali on what sensible regulation could look like Ryan Alford Website: https://www.ryanisright.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanalford/ Ismail Vali / Gaming Compliance International Website: https://gamingcompliance.com/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ismailvali/ GCI Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gaming-compliance-international

I'm not looking at regulated gambling as being a source of great news because they are still fighting this battle of. We got brought in over the top of what was already a dominant, unregulated marketplace. It's not like when they regulated gaming from 2018 onwards in America. That stuff wasn't new. It's not like they just went, hey, how do you fancy sending some online gaming? That would be a really great idea. It was already there. It's been there for three decades, okay?

It wasn't anything new that happened then. All that we did was graft on top of an existing, illegally dominated marketplace, some regulated license gaming. You don't win by following the playbook. You win by rewriting it. 700 episodes deep with the people who actually built something real. No theory, no fluff, no shortcuts. This is right about now with Ryan Alford. Online gambling has become one of the biggest hidden economies in the world.

Most people have no idea how much of it's happening outside of legal, regulated systems. and many people have no idea whose hands is truly going into. Today, I'm sitting down with Ismail Vali, president of gaming compliance international and founder of YieldSec, to unpack the scale of unregulated gambling, illegal streaming, prediction markets, and what he calls the gamification of everything. Ismail, what's up, man? Welcome to the show.

Thank you very much for having me, right? Pleasure to be here. Where are you from, originally? I'm from England, originally. Mixed race, parents from different places, father's Indian Africa and my mother was Dutch, and born and raised in London and the UK. and I've worked on and off in America most of my life. How do you compare England in the US?

You don't compare England. I'm leading the witness a bit. I spend a fair amount of time overseas, but I always like to know. England to me is a country that has a lot of history. I've been out of the UK for a number of years. It's a country that I think, again, lots of people complain about it. It's given me great opportunities. I always look to America as the country.

I've always called it God's own country. This is a beautiful land, beautiful people. You have great opportunities here and an ability to the business and the workup. done in America has always been if you made money for Americans, Americans really backed you. England has a lot more of that class system, which can malign it sometimes. It can work against itself. I found America as a country where you could get on make money, make businesses happen here, and people didn't question things about race or class or anything else. Just did you do the thing you said you were going to do? Yeah. That's the thing that I always value in America.

True. And I don't know if it's some ways you could say a lack of sophistication over time because we're a relatively young country as far as health care and other things. But the American conspiracy does sort of push the innovation forward. It absolutely does. And again, that's something we'll talk about today with gambling is that you have a business. For good or bad. For good or bad. So innovation in America usually means that whenever any business comes to America, this crucible

of innovation, it completely changes that business. And that hasn't really been the case with gambling. It's actually found that legal gambling absolutely is suffering in this marketplace right now. It's kind of not got where it's supposed to after we're now eight years in to legal gambling. And it's kind of not at the place it should be. So it's not controlled. It's not contained.

It's not compliant by any means. You ready to take a risk? I'm absolutely ready to take a risk. What would you like to take a risk on? There'll be lots of puns and analysis today as I compare our gambling discussion. But it's fascinating here in my trading card store and full transparency because even this industry is getting scrutiny now with especially online purchasing. It's called breaks, digital packs, things like that. And I want to get to that.

But I do want to set the table for our audience, Ms. Mel. Let's explain exactly what it is that you do. and that your business does. Let's frame it that way, and then we'll get into some juicy stuff. I'll comment out slightly differently. I'll start out with why you invited me here. We had an article about us in Forbes recently. So Forbes magazine did a piece about a report we published, which we referred to as the

trillion dollar report. How much is online gambling worth globally each year? Last year, online gambling, unregulated, illegal online gambling, was worth $5.9 trillion. By $9 trillion to put that in context, it makes that the world's third largest economic flow after the USA and China. I was doing the math. I'd say top five at least. Exactly.

So this is a worrying level of illegal gambling dominance of industries that are generally regulated on a state by state and country by country basis all over the world. I came out of 20 years of experience in online gaming. I started my career here in America, working for Solomon Smith Barney. I worked as their internet analyst in World Trade Center back in 1997-98. I left that job. I went into the gaming industry because I'd written one report, which is what's going to make money on the internet.

I took the view that gambling and pornography were going to make money on the internet because people craved. Did you bet on that? I didn't bet on it at the time. Look, at the time, there were no prediction market platforms at the time. I was basically suspended from my role at the bank for a week and then rehired at double my salary because so many people requested this report. This is in the days before even downloading reports, people being faxies. I took a view on that. 20 years of experience in the gaming industry in operational terms, companies like Paradise Poker, Poker Stars, Sporting Bet, took those to global number one before regulation existed.

And then had a moment of pausing. in my career. Around 2017-18, I was invited for a job interview in Malta for a company that own Maltese gaming licenses. But while I was waiting for the interview to go and see this company, a bunch of people got arrested in that office. And I asked the reception, is my meeting going to happen? And they went, probably not because the guys you were going to see are the guys having just being taken out with bags over their heads. They turned out to be Sicilian and Drangutamafia. Now, everyone's always known that there's a lot of organized crime interest in the gaming industry. Why does organized crime love gambling? Because they can launder money through it. That's always been the case for

as long as there's been gambling. What's been going on recently in the online gaming industry is crime coming to find a home in this industry because they love this business period. It's not just about money laundering, it's about control of audience because gambling customer, if you get data on him, you can sell him financial loans, you can sell him mortgages, sell him gambling recovery services too. But they're an interesting audience member to target. Crime has been interested in it, and that really changed during the pandemic. That when sports was cancelled, professional sports was cancelled in 2021, what did all those people who were running sports betting sites do? legal and illegal.

The legal guys kind of went there. There's nothing we can do. What do we offer the customers? There's no product here. The illegal guys pivoted hard. So they went to illegal streaming and they said, we need a product here. We need you to give us content that we can offer people to gamble them. And what you ended up with was children's basketball being streamed and snail racing from Thailand.

I'm not going to. Snail racing from Thailand. I remember. This stuff started to break out the box. And then over that pandemic period, crime realized that the audience were willing to bet on anything. and they literally would bet on everything. And what you now end up with, what's been in our report,

the business that I'm in now, I ran a company called YieldSec, which I founded. YelSEC was short for Yield Security. We looked at all of the audience, all their activity from metadata. We have a proprietary scraping technology, and we buy data from other people. We're looking for where the audience is

and what they're doing, how long for, and we estimate an amount of money that they're spending on those things. Our estimates have been proven right year after year on things like the Super Bowl, March Madness, World Cup, European Championships of Soccer, because what we've said

has come true. We're basically very good at the predicting where audiences are. In products we monitor and know about gambling, streaming, cryptocurrencies. I sold Yelsec last year to a company called Gaming Compliance International. Gaming Compliance basically look at the same thing for regulatory clients. So if you're a legal stakeholder in the online gaming business, we help you understand what's out there, awareness of what's going on, how much money is being made and making sure that revenue is audited and taxes are paid on it. The main point I see in the gaming business is this. regulated gambling has an ability to provide for commerce, community and consumers, if it's run correctly. GCI is the mechanics behind the marketplace.

We help our legal stake, all the clients, control those marketplaces, because if you're not controlled, all that money is effectively being stolen from your marketplace. Now, if you look at a marketplace like the United States, in 2024, you had an online gambling marketplace, sports betting, casino and poker, worth just over $90 billion. Last year, it was worth $125 billion. Now, how much of that money is staying here in America to help local commerce, local companies who hire people, local community, payment of tax, and local consumers being safe and protected, children being excluded, for example.

So last year, 2025, $125 billion, regulated was $28 billion and unregulated was $97 billion. Are you looking at nearly $100 billion a year theft from marketplace in America? On a state-by-state basis, that's all money that's leaving. States, it's all money that's going to fund offshore crime. So this is basically the movement of consumer value extraction being taken away from the United States and given to people who are in criminal industries. I'm digesting. I've got 12 rabbit holes. I want to go down.