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Market impact data on gambling behaviour - operator data to Sept 2022

29 November 2022

The Gambling Commission has published further data showing how gambling behaviour is reacting to current environmental factors in Great Britain.

The operator data reflects the period between March 2020 and September 2022, inclusive, and covers online and in-person gambling with data from Licensed Betting Operators (LBOs) found on Britain’s high streets.

Caution is advised when making any year-on-year comparisons between some months during the period of this data collection, due to differing operating environments as a result of varying degrees of lockdown restrictions between 2020 and 2022.

Comparison should also not be made with the industry statistics dataset, as the market impact data may include free bets and bonuses.

This update contains operator data to September 2022. We publish this data on a quarterly basis, so this analysis makes quarter-on-quarter comparisons.

Please note that this release refers to quarter one (Q1) and quarter two (Q2) in the financial year 2022-2023.

The latest operator data shows1:

  • online total Gross Gambling Yield (GGY) in Q2 (July to September) was £1.2 billion, a decrease of 4 percent from Q1 (April to June). The overall number of total bets and or spins decreased 1 percent from Q1 to Q2, the average monthly active accounts2 decreased 9 percent
  • slots GGY decreased 3 percent to £548 million between Q1 and Q2. The number of spins decreased 2 percent to 18.5 billion, while the average monthly active accounts decreased 4 percent to 3.4 million per month
  • the number of online slots sessions lasting longer than an hour remained stable at 8.4 million between Q1 and Q2. The average session length lasted 17 minutes, with approximately 7 percent of all sessions lasting more than one hour
  • LBO GGY decreased 8 percent to £540 million between Q1 and Q2, while the number of total bets and spins decreased 5 percent to 3.2 billion.

We continue to expect extra 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.

We expect operators to:

  • continue to follow the strengthened guidance issued in 2020, taking close interest in data that shows consumers expanding their portfolio of games and spending more time or money than before
  • interact directly where triggers are reached, in addition to their more generic email engagement
  • avoid any temptation to exploit the current situation for marketing purposes, in particular as consumers adjust back to a new normal and be very cautious when seeking to cross-sell products
  • take particular care when on-boarding new customers and making decisions over affordability checks which reflect the environment we are in.

The Commission continues to track market related risk by:

  • assessing the impact of the strengthened guidance issued to operators
  • monitoring key data along with collecting and publishing this additional data
  • where evidence identifies additional risks faced by consumers, taking further action to protect consumers.

The Commission will continue to:

Note to editors

1We 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.

2This 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.

Last updated: 29 November 2022

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