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 March 2023, inclusive, and covers online and in-person gambling covering Licensed Betting Operators (LBOs) found on Britain’s high streets.

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

This release compares Quarter four of financial year 2022 to 2023, with Quarter four 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 Quarter 4 (January to March) was £1.3 billion, an increase of 5 percent from Quarter 4 the previous year. The overall number of total bets and/or spins increased 9 percent year-on-year, whilst the average monthly active accounts² increased 11 percent
• with the reporting period covering the Cheltenham festival, real event betting GGY increased 13 percent year-on-year to £555 million, with total bets and actives also increasing, 19 percent and 9 percent respectively for the vertical
• slots GGY increased 2 percent to £552 million between Quarter 4 2021 to 2022 and Quarter 4 2022 to 2023. The number of spins increased 9 percent, while the average monthly active accounts increased 15 percent to 3.9 million per month during the same timeframe
• the number of online slots sessions lasting longer than an hour increased by 10 percent year-on-year to 8.8 million. The average session length remained at 17 minutes for the fourth quarter in a row, with approximately 6.4 percent of all sessions lasting more than one hour
• LBO GGY increased 6 percent to nearly £585 million in Quarter 4 2022 to 2023, compared to the same quarter last year, while the number of total bets and spins increased 2 percent to 3.3 billion.

Note to editors

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 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 any of the other data-points.

For all media enquiries, please contact the Gambling Commission press office.

https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/news/article/market-impact-data-on-gambling-behaviour-operator-data-to-march-2023