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Photo of Gambling Commission Head of Statistics Helen Bryce alongside the blog title - 'Gambling Survey for Great Britain: 2025 results and three years of trend data'

Gambling Survey for Great Britain: 2025 results and three years of trend data

Our Head of Statistics Helen Bryce introduces new trend data following the publication of the third annual report from the Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB).

Posted 16 July 2026 by Helen Bryce

Today we have published the GSGB annual report for 2025, the official statistics about gambling amongst adults aged 18 and over in Great Britain.

We now have trend series data from the GSGB for three years (2023, 2024 and 2025). This means we can really start to take advantage of the ability to detect patterns and trends in gambling behaviour over time, one of the key benefits of GSGB that Professor Sturgis commented on when he independently assessed the GSGB approach.

The key take aways from today’s release are:

  • at a headline level, consumer engagement in gambling is stable over time - including the number of people who engage in gambling, the level of enjoyment people have when gambling and the number of people scoring 8 and over on the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI)
  • beneath the headlines, we can use GSGB to spot trends and patterns at a sub population level. In the trend data we have seen an increase in gambling amongst males aged 55 and over
  • findings from the GSGB demonstrate the importance of understanding the broader consequences and risks of gambling from a range of measures rather than relying on one metric.

These findings and many more can be found in the GSGB 2025 headlines report or GSGB 2025 data tables for those of you who prefer to access the findings in table format.

You can also access all three years of GSGB data in our interactive dashboard (opens in new tab). You can filter the data by year, age, sex, nation and region to undertake your own analysis. This dashboard has been built and expanded based on user feedback.

We have continued to widen our understanding of the consequences of gambling, alongside behavioural risk measured by the problem gambling severity index, in two additional reports published today. The first report assesses whether the prevalence of people reporting ‘one or more’ potential adverse consequences can be used as a meaningful topline indicator of gambling-related harm in the population. The second report demonstrates the importance of these wider questions as it shows that some people may be more susceptible to gambling related harm at lower levels of gambling risk.

As always, we have published supporting technical information alongside today’s publications. The GSGB is a nationally representative survey producing estimates of gambling behaviours amongst the population and as with any methodology has its own strengths and weaknesses. You can access a full technical report which sets out more detail about these strengths and weaknesses, including the risk of over estimation and under estimation of survey estimates. We have also updated the examples included in the GSGB guidance to include the latest data from 2025 – remember this guidance is there to help you to understand how the statistics from the GSGB should and should not be used.

As we continue with a programme of continuous improvement for GSGB based on findings from Professor Sturgis at London School of Economics (LSE) and the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) we have updated those pages on the GSGB hub on our website too, including publishing a think piece from Professor Heather Wardle about the coherence and comparability of GSGB with previous gambling survey findings titled ‘Different Survey, Same Story’. We published a report earlier in the year comparing GSGB estimates in relation to Bingo played in person with industry admissions data and have since received stakeholder feedback about participation estimates from the GSGB in relation to visiting a Casino, placing a bet via a Betting Exchange and playing Football Pools that we are looking into. We have also been keeping a watching brief on the ESRC funded Survey Futures programme (opens in new tab), and pleased to see GSGB aligns with a lot of best practice coming out of that work.

Later in the Autumn we’ll be publishing a topical report specifically to understand gambling behaviours amongst ethnic minority communities, being written by the GSGB project team at the University of Glasgow. Sample size has always been a challenge in the past in this area of research, but we’ll be combining three years’ worth of data to give us a sample size of 50,000 respondents to inform this analysis.

We’re also really pleased to see the GSGB being used by the wider research community. Public Health Scotland have commissioned a boost of the GSGB in Scotland and the Department of Health and Social Care (DSHC) have commissioned Local Authority estimates using GSGB.

For those of you planning your own GSGB analysis, the 2025 data will be deposited in the UK Data Service by the end of the year. Please do let us know of any plans you have to use GSGB data by emailing statistics@gamblingcommission.gov.uk.

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