Strong growth in British online gambling
The Gambling Commission’s report shows that bets and spins reached record highs.
UK.- The British Gambling Commission has reported that online gross gambling yield (GGY) reached £1.54bn in the final quarter of 2024. That’s a rise of 21 per cent year-on-year and 16.7 per cent from the third quarter. The number of bets and spins rose by 8 per cent year-on-year to a record 25.9 billion despite a 3 per cent drop in the number of active player accounts.
Online slots generated £709m, a rise of 15 per cent year-on-year. The number of spins reached 23.9 billion, a rise of 9 per cent, and the average number of monthly active accounts increased by 10 per cent. The regulator noted that the figures may have been impacted by one operator reclassifying some of its products as slots. The average session length for online slots rose slightly to 18 minutes, and the proportion of sessions lasting over an hour was 6 per cent, down from 7 per cent a year earlier.
After slots, the next biggest source of yield was real-event betting, which contributed £647m to the total. That’s a rise of 38 per cent year-on-year and the highest total since the second quarter of 2021. The rise came despite a 7 per cent drop in the number of bets and a 3 per cent decline in monthly active accounts.
Non-slots online casino generated £151.9 million, up 2 per cent while online poker yield was down 19 per cent at £12.7m. Meanwhile, the figure for virtual betting fell by 14 per cent to £9.5m and esports betting GGY fell by 12 per cent to £3.7m. Other online gambling generated £1.9m, up by 58 per cent.
Land-based betting operators generated £592m, a rise of 5 per cent. Here, the number of bets and spins fell by 4 per cent to 3.1 billion. Gaming machines generated £279.7m while £159.8m was generated over the counter and £152.6m via self-service betting terminals. The number of machine sessions was down by 4 per cent to 22.8 million, but the number of sessions of over an hour in length rose by 6 per cent to 621,772.
The Gambling Commission publishes new survey findings
Meanwhile, the British regulator continues to turn out data from the first edition of the new Gambling Survey for Great Britain. Its latest report focuses on types of gambling and concludes that some have a higher risk than others irrespective of player’s activity, age, sex or background
The Gambling Commission still found more evidence of more problematic gambling in specific verticals. Specifically, online slots and non-sports betting were still found to be significantly associated with PGSI scores of eight or more, even discounting the influence of gambling frequency.
