From Charity to Online Casinos — Gambling Operators Buy Up Domains of Former High-Profile Websites

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Offshore gambling operators are buying up expired domains previously used by charities, educational projects and public campaigns to promote their own websites. The findings come from a Backlinking.com study of 3,692 domains sold at auction between January 2024 and May 2026.

The domains examined had a combined sale value of $22.3 million. Researchers found that 448 of them (12.1%) had been repurposed into gambling-related websites after changing hands.

The study also found that more expensive domains were more likely to be used for gambling promotion. Around 10% of domains sold for less than $5,000 ended up hosting gambling-related content, compared with at least 20% of those sold for $25,000 or more.

Notable examples identified in the study include:

• Every Woman Every Child — formerly the website of a UN initiative focused on improving the health of women and children. Its domain now leads to a website promoting an Indonesian online casino.
• Queen’s Green Canopy — the website of a UK tree-planting campaign celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s 70 years on the throne. It now redirects visitors to an Indonesian online slots website.
• Vote Leave — the former website of the campaign advocating Britain’s departure from the European Union. Following its sale, the domain was turned into a directory of offshore online casinos.
• projectbritain.com — an educational website that provided schoolchildren with information about life in Britain. Its domain was sold for $96,000 in October 2025. The educational content was subsequently replaced with a collection of gambling-related links.

Offshore operators acquire established domains to improve their visibility in search engines. These domains often retain backlinks from other websites, including major news outlets and government organizations. Such links can help online casinos and bookmakers rank higher in search results. Google classifies this practice as search spam.