Market Impact Data on Gambling Behaviour – Operator Data to December 2022

BIRMINGHAM, U.K. (February 23, 2023) –The Gambling Commission has published further data showing how gambling behaviour is reacting to current environmental factors in Great Britain.

This data, sourced from operators, reflects the period between March 2020 and December 2022, inclusive, and covers online and in-person gambling covering Licensed Betting Operators (LBOs) found on Britain’s high streets.

The comparison should not be made with the industry statistics dataset, as this dataset reported here may include free bets and bonuses, and does not include data from all operators.

This release compares Quarter 3 (Q3) of the financial year 2022 to 2023, with Q3 of 2021 to 2022, looking at how the market has changed in comparative periods over a year.

The latest operator data shows¹:

• online total Gross Gambling Yield (GGY) in Q3 (October to December) was £1.2 billion, a decrease of 2 per cent from Q3 the previous year. The overall number of total bets and or spins increased 8 per cent year-on-year, whilst the average monthly active accounts² increased 13 per cent
• slots GGY increased 2 percent to £582 million between Q3 2021 to 2022 and Q3 2022 to 2023. The number of spins increased 8 per cent, while the average monthly active accounts increased 13 per cent to 3.7 million per month year-on-year for the quarter
• the number of online slots sessions lasting longer than an hour increased 11 per cent year-on-year for Q3 to top 9 million for the first time in this dataset. The number of total sessions increased by 21 per cent in the equivalent time period, with 6.5 per cent of all sessions lasting in excess of one hour during Q3, the lowest percentage recorded since we started collecting data in March 2020. The average session length decreased from 2 minutes to 17 minutes year-on-year
• the number of customer interactions in Q3 decreased by 10 per cent to 2.9 million compared to the same period last year, with the majority remaining automated in nature³. The number of direct interactions undertaken by operators in this dataset has increased by 32 per cent year-on-year
• LBO GGY increased 5 per cent to £560 million between Q3 2021 to 2022 and Q3 2022 to 2023, while the number of total bets and spins increased 2 per cent to 3.4 billion.

We continue to expect vigilance from operators as consumers are impacted in different ways by the current economic environment. Many people will feel vulnerable as they face further uncertainty about their personal or financial circumstances.

¹ We are currently investigating the categorisation of certain products. This may result in the changing of some data between verticals, however, this should have no impact on the overall totals.

² This is the total number of times activity has taken place across all verticals; therefore, an active account may be counted more than once if they participate in more than one vertical. Additionally, a quarter-on-quarter comparison means that there is a further degree of double counting in the active accounts’ data point. For example, if an account has been active in two of the three months in that quarter, it will be counted twice in the total for that quarter. This is only applicable to active accounts and not to any of the other data points.

³ Some operators may have revised their algorithms.

SOURCE: UK Gambling Commission.