UKGC Releases New Gambling Industry Statistics

The UK Gambling Commission has released its newest report on the gambling industry within the United Kingdom. This is the report for May 2017. This report is issued in May and November of each year. It includes details on online gambling activities and how they are being run around the country.

The UKGC announced that the gross gambling yield in the UK was at £13.8 billion. This is according to statistics reported from October 2015 to September 2016. The report is used to gauge how well the industry is evolving and changing over time.

The report also says that about 106,000 people are currently employed in many forms by the gambling industry. This is a drop of about 0.4 percent from what that total was in March 2015, thus giving off the impression that the industry is relatively stable and isn’t likely to change by far too much.

Fewer Betting Shops

An interesting finding in this report states that there was a drop in the number of betting shops by 1.4 percent. There are 8,788 such betting shops around the country. The decline is based off of the number of betting shops that were open in March 2016.

Meanwhile, there was a decline in the number of bingo shops around the country. There was a 5.7 percent drop down to there being 583 such shops. This is also based off of numbers dating back to March 2016.

The Rise of Online Gambling

Online gambling has been on the rise in the UK. The report states that about £4.5 billion was spent on the remote sector of gaming in the country. The market share for remote betting and casino activities was listed at about a third of what the overall size of the market is.

This rise in online activities could be a factor that might have influenced by betting actions takes place. The number of gaming machines in the country went down by 0.2 percent in the recorded time period to about 176,000.

Lottery Points

The National Lottery has been working hard to get its contributions out to various worthwhile causes. Still, the annual amount of money that was contributed by the Lottery went down by 5.7 percent from one year to the next. The contributions made totaled about £1.7 billion. Meanwhile, large society lotteries experienced an increase in how they contribute to such causes with a 9 percent increase up to £231.8 million during the same time period.

Losses From Players

The final statistic to take a look at involves how losses from players have developed over time. The statistics suggest that players around the country lost £13.8 billion in gambling. This is the highest total to have ever been recorded by the country since records started being taken.

Much of this could be due to the rise of fixed-odds betting machines. These machines have been very risky and addictive. About £1.82 billion was lost to these betting terminals. This may result in added efforts to manage security and other protective functions for managing betting activities.