Statistics and research release
Market overview - operator data to March 2026 (published May 2026)
An overview of the data provided by gambling operators up to December 2025.
Summary
Also published recently
Operator Data
The Gambling Commission has published data to March 2026, with the dataset collected since March 2020 showing how gambling behaviour has changed over the period. This will be the final publication of this data set. For more information, please read the full statement.
This release compares Quarter 4 of financial year 2025 to 2026, with Quarter 4 of 2024 to 2025, looking at how the market has changed in comparative periods over a year.
This release covers data from the largest online operators and betting premises found on Britain's high streets.
This is the fourth quarter since the maximum stake limit for online slots games was introduced. The £5 limit for all adults went live 9 April 2025 and the £2 limit for adults aged 18 to 24 went live 21 May 2025. Although some operator implementation dates may have been slightly earlier.
Note: We encourage you to always refer to the most recent excel data document which contains updated data for the entire period. This can be found on Gambling business data on gambling to March 2026 (published May 2026).
Online gambling
The online gambling data, collected from the largest online operators, covers the months from March 2020 through to March 2026.
Comparison should not be made with the industry statistics dataset, as the data set reported here may include free bets and bonuses and does not cover all operators.
Latest data, from January to March 2026, shows total online Gross Gambling Yield (GGY) increased 7 percent, compared to the same period last year, to £1.55 billion. The increase was mostly driven by Slots which increased by 12 percent year-on-year.
The overall number of total bets and/or spins increased 7 percent year-on-year to 26.8 billion. The number of average monthly active accounts1 decreased 1 percent during the quarter compared to the previous year, with the number of average monthly active accounts totalling 13.4 million.
Online real event betting
Online real event betting GGY increased by 1 percent year-on-year for Quarter 4, to £600 million. The number of bets decreased 8 percent, while the average monthly active accounts decreased 5 percent compared to the same quarter last year.
Online slots
Slots GGY increased 12 percent year-on-year to £773 million for this reporting period. The number of spins increased 7 percent in the quarter to 25.1 billion. The number of average monthly active accounts increased by 6 percent year-on-year to 4.8 million. The number of spins per session has decreased from 136 to 124 year-on-year, whilst the GGY per session also decreased from £4.01 to £3.82 in the equivalent timeframe.
Some of operators have refined their session length methodology during the previous year which will impact year-on-year comparisons on the number of sessions, sessions over one hour and average session length metrics.
Online safer gambling indicators
The number of online slots sessions lasting longer than an hour decreased by 12 percent year-on-year to 8.9 million. The number of total sessions increased by 18 percent in the equivalent time period to 202 million. Approximately 4.4 percent of all sessions lasted in excess of 1 hour during the quarter, compared to 5.9 percent the previous year. The average session length decreased by 2 minutes to 15 minutes.
Again, changes in session length methodology by some operators will impact comparisons.
The total number of customer interactions in Quarter 4 increased by 32 percent year-on-year to 5.2 million, with the majority remaining automated in nature. The number of direct interactions undertaken by operators in this dataset has decreased by 9 percent year-on-year. During the past year, several operators have refined their markers of harms algorithms, resulting in a higher number of automated interactions.
Offline Betting
The Commission has collected data from the largest betting premises found on Britain's high streets for the months of March (pre-lockdown) and June 2020 through to March 2026
GGY reported for Quarter 4 (January to March) decreased by 5 percent from Quarter 4 last year to £527 million, while the number of total bets and spins decreased by 1 percent to 3.1 billion.
Over the Counter (OTC)
The number of bets placed over the counter decreased 3 percent in the quarter compared to the same period last year to 125 million, while GGY decreased by 18 percent to £125 million.
Self-Service Betting Terminals (SSBT)
The number of bets placed on SSBTs increased by 6 percent year-on-year to 42.9 million. GGY slightly increased year-on-year by 0.6 percent to £126 million.
Machines sessions
Machines GGY marginally increased by 0.02 percent in Quarter 4 year-on-year to £276 million, with average spend per session increasing by 29 pence year-on-year to £12.48. The average number of spins per machines session increased by 2 to 132 spins.
Offline safer gambling indicators
2.68 percent of machine sessions lasted more than 1 hour, which is a slight decrease on 2.71 percent in Quarter 4 2024 to 2025.
Notes
1This 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 a further degree of double counting in the active accounts’ data-point. For example, if an account has been active in 2 months of the 3 months in a 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.
Data and downloads
There are no files for this release.