Methodology
Quality assurance
All regulatory returns, society lottery submissions and National Lottery data are subject to quality assurance check for accuracy.
Each regulatory return is checked for accuracy and consistency with previous submissions and with data from the wider gambling industry. Part of this checking is to see whether the return has raised any flags with our automated systems for quality control. Each return is checked again during the preparation of the Gambling Industry Statistics. If issues are found with the data we will talk to the relevant licence holder, for example the gambling business.
We carry out a similar process for society lottery submissions, while National Lottery data – which we receive daily – is subject to separate quality assurance.
Limitations - Estimating
We use estimating when regulatory returns are late. We estimate a licensee’s values by using their last return. We take that previous figure, calculate a daily rate and apportion it against the missing reporting period.
Limitations – Other
Where there may be limitations with the data we publish, these will be written within the publication alongside the data.
Provisional and revised statistics
There may be differences in the data in our industry statistics on each new publication due to our use of estimating. We only update figures for the last three financial years on the annual publication. This means our statistics for these reporting periods should be considered provisional, meaning they could change in future publications.
Where we receive new data from operators (for example, a regulatory return covering a period for which we had used estimating) we will update our data.
Unless any updates to the data create major changes to our statistics, the updated figures will be published in later scheduled publications of Gambling Industry Statistics (annually). Sometimes, we may explain any data issues on Industry Statistics pages of our website.
For further information, read the Official Statistics revisions and corrections policy.
Premises data
Up to March 2012, data about the number and type of gambling premises data was given to us by local authorities. Data from this source was often incomplete. From March 2013 onwards, premises figures have been given to us by operators in regulatory returns, apart from Casino premises data which was taken from Casino Drop and Win data returns until 31 March 2015. Since April 2015 Casino premises data is now collected from regulatory returns. We don’t recommend comparing the data across the different data sources.
Inflation
We do not adjust historic Gambling Industry Statistics figures for inflation.
Rounding
We calculate our totals and percentages from unrounded figures.
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Last updated: 25 November 2025
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