Record slots performance drives British online gambling yield to 13% growth in Q3

British online gambling yield reached £1.32bn in the third quarter.

UK.- The British Gambling Commission has reported that gross gambling yield (GGY) from the largest regulated operators reached £1.32bn in Q3. While that’s a decline sequentially, from £1.46bn in Q2, it represents a rise of 13 per cent year-on-year.

Revenue was driven by a 16 per cent increase in GGY from online slots, which hit a record £689m. The average number of spins per session was slightly lower than in Q3 2023, at 142 compared to 147, but sessions lasted longer.

There was a 9 per cent rise in the number of players dedicating more than an hour per session, which reached 10 million. And while the average GGY per session declined from £4.20 to £4.13, the number of sessions was up 18 per cent. The average length of session was steady at 17 minutes.

The Gambling Commission estimates that its reported data covers around 80 per cent of the regulated market. It noted that the figures may have been impacted to an extent by one operator reclassifying some products as slots.

As for other verticals, online real event betting GGY was up by 6 per cent year-on-year at £453m. The number of active accounts was up by 9 per cent but the number of bets fell by 10 per cent. GGY from retail betting fell once more, dropping 1 per cent to £533m. The total number of bets was level with last year but the number of over-the-counter bets fell by 6 per cent. Bets via self-service terminals rose by 9 per cent.

Overall, the number of monthly active accounts was up by 8 per cent. The number of bets over all verticals rose by 12 per cent to £25.2bn.

Meanwhile, the UK government has held off from proposals to hike gambling tax in the autumn budget. High-profile reports from two think tanks had left the gambling fearing that it would be used to make up for a hole in finances, but chancellor Rachel Reeves has confirmed that there will be no changes in gambling tax this time around.

In her budget presentation on Wednesday, confirmed that gambling tax will remain at a tiered rate of 15 to 50 per cent for land-based gaming venues. The Gross Gaming Yield bands for land-based venues will be frozen from April 1 2025 until March 31 2026. For remote gambling, the tax rate will remain at 21 per cent. The government plans to open a consultation next year on proposals to unify the tax structure for online, telephone, TV and radio to simplify the system and close loopholes.