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Report

Understanding the adverse consequences of gambling

This report presents secondary analysis of Year 2 (2024) GSGB data

Published
2 October 2025

Last updated
2 October 2025 - Changes

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  1. Contents
  2. Executive summary

Executive summary

Understanding gambling-related harm is one of our key evidence gaps and priorities. The Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI)1 was designed to measure gambling behaviours in the general population, and is often used as a proxy measure of harm. However the PGSI does not capture the range of adverse consequences that people can experience from gambling, as it was not specifically developed for this purpose. We therefore recently developed a new set of survey questions to assess negative impacts from gambling. The questions align with the Framework for Action by Wardle and others (2018)(opens in new tab), which categorises harms across 3 domains:

  1. Resources (for example, financial strain).
  2. Relationships (for example, conflict or isolation).
  3. Health (for example, psychological distress).

Survey questions differentiate between severe consequences, which are clearly and unequivocally harmful (that is, relationship breakdown, experiences of violence, losing significant financial assets, and crime), and potential adverse consequences, which can vary in severity and often have more cumulative effects (for example, reduced spending on everyday items). These questions are included in the Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB), and reported on an annual basis.

This report presents secondary analysis of Year 2 (2024) GSGB data. We aimed to address the following research questions:

  1. To what extent are demographic characteristics (age, sex, ethnicity, and household income) associated with experiencing potential adverse consequences (affecting resources, health, and relationships) and severe consequences (such as relationship breakdown, violence, significant financial loss, and crime)?
  2. Among those who reported negative impacts from gambling, what proportion had experienced these impacts across multiple areas of their life (that is, affecting financial resources, relationships, and health)?

Key findings

Both potential and severe adverse consequences from gambling were most prevalent amongst males, younger individuals, those identifying as Mixed, Asian, or Black (compared with White), and people with lower financial income.

The negative impacts of gambling were rarely confined to a single area of life. Instead, people tended to report negative impacts across multiple domains:

Among the 15 percent of participants who had gambled in the past 4 weeks and reported at least one potential adverse consequence, over a quarter (29.5 percent) experienced consequences across all 3 domains (resources, relationships, and health), while half (49.9 percent) reported consequences in at least 2 domains.

Of the 2.1 percent of participants who had gambled in the past 4 weeks and reported at least 1 severe consequence, nearly half experienced 2 or more types (44.5 percent), and 8.1 percent reported all 4 severe consequences (crime, significant financial loss, relationship breakdown, and violence).

An important caveat to these findings is that they do not account for differences in the type of gambling activities that people play. It is therefore possible that differences in activity type may partly account for the observed associations between demographics and adverse consequences. We plan to conduct further analysis to test this hypothesis.

Results from this secondary analysis of Year 2 (2024) GSGB data provide insight into who may be most at risk of experiencing negative consequences from gambling, and how different types of consequences co-occur. Our findings have important implications for harm reduction strategies, such as the need to ensure that interventions and safer-gambling messaging engage a diverse range of consumers. The new GSGB survey questions capture adverse consequences that other tools, such as the PGSI, often miss. The inclusion of these questions, alongside the PGSI, enables us to monitor both behavioural risk and the tangible impacts of gambling on people’s lives. This broader understanding of harm is essential for ensuring that regulatory decisions are guided by robust and comprehensive data.

References

1 Ferris, J., & Wynne, H. (2001). The Canadian Problem Gambling Index: Final report. Ottawa: Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse. The PGSI is a 9-item validated scale that measures gambling behaviours and experiences, and categorises individuals into ‘risk categories’ based on their scores. Further details about the PGSI scale can be found in our Problem gambling screens report.

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