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Gambling Survey for Great Britain Year 2 topic report: Investigating the profiles of those who gamble more frequently

This topic report uses data from Year 2 of the GSGB to explore the association between engagement in gambling activities, frequency of gambling, and risk.

Published
2 October 2025

Last updated
2 October 2025 - Changes

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  1. Contents
  2. Executive Summary

Executive Summary

This Topic Report uses data from Year 2 of the Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB) to explore the association between engagement in gambling activities, frequency of gambling, and risk. It is an extension of the GSGB Year 1 analysis, published in February 2025, that showed, irrespective of someone’s wider engagement in gambling or their demographic profile, there is a significant association between past year engagement in some activities and scoring eight or more on the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI). The Year 2 data allows this relationship to be investigated further; the extended list of activities permit a degree of granularity not possible with any previous gambling survey, for example, through the inclusion of in-play betting as a separate activity, and the larger base sizes allow more detailed analyses than possible in Year 1.

Key findings

There are notable differences in the profiles of people by frequency of gambling and gambling activity. People who gamble weekly but only on lottery draws tend to be older, married, owner-occupiers. People who gamble weekly on any activity, including lottery draws, are more likely to live in more deprived areas, have fewer qualifications and live in housing association accommodation.

There is a strong association between the frequency of specific activities, the type of activity, and Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI) scores. PGSI scores measure behavioural symptoms of gambling disorder and certain adverse consequences from gambling. People who gamble weekly on any activity have higher PGSI scores than those who gamble weekly but on lottery draws only. However, people who gamble more frequently, weekly or more often, have higher PGSI scores than those who gamble less frequently.

When looking at weekly participation in gambling activities in turn, there is evidence that weekly participation in fruits and slots in person, in-play betting, but also betting on non-sports events online and other non-National Lottery scratch cards are all associated with higher PGSI scores.

Sports betting on a weekly basis, once in-play betting was excluded, was not significantly related to PGSI scores. However, there was a strong association between weekly in-play betting (either online or in-person) and higher PGSI scores, suggesting the rapid rewards and continuous play connected with this activity is associated to higher PGSI scores.

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