Report
Young People and Gambling 2024: Official statistics
Gambling Commission report produced by Ipsos on young people and their gambling behaviour, attitudes and awareness in 2024.
Contents
- Executive summary
- Young people’s active involvement in gambling
- The impacts of gambling on young people
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- Summary
- The impact of gambling on relationships
- Young people’s feelings when gambling
- The impact of gambling on young people’s engagement with school and homework
- The impact of gambling on young people’s sleep
- The impact of gambling on spending
- Experience of ever seeing a family member gambling
- The impact of family members’ gambling on young people
- Wider experience of gambling
- Games and gaming machines
- Online gambling
- Lotteries and lottery style games
- Attitudes towards gambling and reasons for gambling
- Recall of gambling adverts and promotion
- Appendices
- List of gambling activities and definitions
5 - Illegal gambling
36.22. The Commission views the prevention of illegal gambling as an enforcement priority. Combating illegal gambling is of significant benefit to the licensed community as the provision of illegal unregulated gambling impacts upon the reputation of the industry as a whole. The persistent and widespread existence of illegal gambling also reduces the incentive on operators to be correctly licensed. Those engaged in illegal gambling should expect to be subject to the criminal investigation and prosecution process.
36.23. The Commission will generally take the lead in prosecuting the offence of providing facilities for gambling where it is committed in the context of illegal gambling which appears organised and has a potentially national or regional impact, or where there are deliberate, reckless or significant breaches by a licensed operator.
36.24. In England and Wales, the expectation is that licensing authorities will take prosecutions against those providing or facilitating illegal gambling – in effect gambling without a licence or permit – where the criminality is contained in one premises. In Scotland, the expectation is that licensing authorities will work with the police to address this criminality.
36.25. Dealing with illegal poker, or illegal or illegally sited machines in a specific premises often lends itself to a multi-agency coordinated approach with licensing authority officers leading the operation and the police and sometimes HMRC (opens in new tab) providing support, advice and expertise. Licensing officers should contact the Commission in the first instance to agree if such a multi-agency approach would be appropriate.
36.26. As stated in paragraph 36.1, the annual premises licence fee is set to cover the costs of compliance and enforcement work undertaken by licensing authorities, including the cost of dealing with illegal gambling in a licensing authority’s area.
Last updated: 14 September 2023
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