British gambling regulator reveals 13% drop in igaming yield

Figures from the regulator show the gross gambling yield for igaming in November fell to £471.5m.

UK.- The Gambling Commission has reported that online gross gambling yield (GGY) fell 13% month-on-month in November to £471.5m.

The regulator says the decline, based on numbers from 80 per cent of the British market, was mainly due to the normalisation of real event betting margins after high levels in October.

GGY from real event betting fell by 28 per cent, from £290m in October to £209.2m.

Despite the fall in GGY, real event betting remains the largest vertical and actually saw the number of active accounts and total bets increase month-on-month, up by 4 per cent in both cases.

Online slots remained the second largest market with GGY up 3 per cent month-on-month in November, reaching £176.8m.

The number of active accounts increased by 1 per cent to 2.8 million, the highest since the Gambling Commission began issuing monthly reports at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The number of online slot spins increased by 4 per cent to over 5.2 billion and the number of sessions by 2 per cent to over 27.5 million.

The average loss per player in slots was higher than in any other online vertical at £63, compared to £43 for real event betting and £35 for casino.

GGY for other igaming, including casino, rose 6 per cent month-on-month to £66.4m. Online poker GGY rose 9 per cent to £9.1m, virtual betting 8 per cent to £7.2m. Esports betting GGY surged 78 per cent to £1.4m.

The regulator has recently proposed changes to the way it carries out research on gambling.

It has also hit out at what it termed “exaggerated claims” about the scale and threat of the illegal gambling market in the UK.