Recently the UK Gambling Commission published some interesting numbers concerning the UK gambling market. The numbers covered the period from April 2013 to March 2016, covering essentially three fiscal years.
The gross revenue (CGY = revenue after paying out winnings to gamblers, but before taxation) for the entire British gambling industry was 13.6 billion Pound Sterling. That’s an impressive amount of money.
The breakdown of the different sectors is particularly interesting. For instance, it has now become apparent that the online gambling market in the UK has grown significantly and is now 33 percent of the total UK gambling market. In numbers it means that the revenue from online gambling was a staggering 4.5 billion Pound Sterling. That number can be further broken down, of course. For instance, 2.6 billion Pound revenue falls to online casinos, whilst betting (sports betting, pool betting, betting exchanges) shares 1.8 billion Pound of the cake. Bingo still brought in 152 million pound.
By the way, online slots alone have a share of 1.8 billion Pound in the online casino market. That confirms once and for all that online slots are the main attraction in online casinos, though the allure of table games and live casinos can’t be underestimated.
Following the online casinos in market share is the national lottery, which brought in 3.4 billion Pound Sterling. Betting shops follow in third place with 3.3 billion, whilst traditional brick and mortar casinos still managed to bring in an impressive 1 billion in revenue.
There are 8,709 betting shops in the UK and 167,839 slot machines, just to offer some perspective. Of those slot machines, 34,884 are a category B2, which means wagers up to £100 are possible on these machines. They’re considered a huge factor in the rising numbers of gambling addiction and new bills have been introduced that are intended to curb the use of these slot machines radically. Either the total number of machines should be reduced or the limit should be lowered. There’s hardly a need for slot machines to allow wagers of £100.
By the way, a significant amount of the national lottery revenue, 1.8 billion Pound Sterling to be precise, went into charitable ventures.
Here are the numbers in more detail: http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/pdf/Gambling-industry-statistics-April-2013-to-March-2016.pdf