Money not the main reason for gambling, UK regulator concludes

The British Gambling Regulator says the new report provides deeper insights.
The British Gambling Regulator says the new report provides deeper insights.

The Gambling Commission has published a report on gambling motivators among British players.

UK.- The British Gambling Commission has published a report on gambling motivation based on figures from the new Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB). The study picks out the players’ main motivations to game in different verticals. Despite a strong interest in big wins, the Gambling Commission concludes that big money is only the main motivator when it comes to National lottery products, not other forms of gambling.

The study takes the British Reasons for Gambling Questionnaire (RGQ) as its basis. Conducted among 9,742 adults between July 2023 to February 2024, the survey featured 15 questions asking participants who gambled in the past 12 months about their reasons for gambling. The questions also went deeper, asking respondents to state how often their main motivator for gambling influences them in the different types of gambling they took part in (the options were always, often, sometimes, or never).

The majority of respondents said they gambled because they wanted to win big money (86 per cent), but this gambling motivator was followed by gambling “because it is fun” (70 per cent), to make money (58 per cent) and “because it is exciting” (55 per cent). At the lower end of the list of gambling motivators, some 24 per cent gambled to socialise, 9 per cent to compete with others and 8 per cent “to impress others”.

The Gambling Commission observed differences across age groups. For example, those aged 18 to 24 rated fun as a more important motivator than winning big money, with 83 per cent listing fun as a main motivator. There were also differences among people who gambled at different frequencies. Among those who had gambled in the past four weeks, only 39 per cent said their main motivator was the chance of a big win, while 22 per cent said to make money and 15 per cent said they gambled for fun.

The findings were analysed via a principal component analysis (PCA) to assign a value to each motivator within four broader categories of behaviours: gambling for social reasons, enhancement reasons, monetary reasons, recreational reasons and coping (escaping from daily life).

With online gambling, enhancement reasons were found to be the strongest gambling motivator. Coping/escaping from daily life was found to be the main motivator for online sports betting while retail sports bettors were more motivated by the challenge of betting. A similar pattern was observed with casino gaming, with online casino more linked to escapism than land-based casino gambling. Perhaps logically, in-person gambling was also more associated with social motivators, particularly land-based bingo and casino gaming.

The Gambling Commission said: “This latest report provides additional insight into the reasons people give for taking part in gambling and explores how those reasons relate to different gambling activities. A better understanding of the association between motivation and activities is critical in understanding both general gambling behaviour as well as its consequences.”

More details from the survey can be found on the Gambling Commission website.

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