Overall gambling participation in Great Britain dropped to 46% in the most recent period, while the UK’s Office for Statistics Regulation published a review of the Gambling Survey for Great Britain.
Overall gambling participation in Great Britain between September 2024 and January 2025 decreased by three percentage points from the three months prior, according to new data from the Gambling Commission, published as part of its Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB) research conducted by NatCen.
Participation in gambling activity in the last four weeks of the questioned public was 46%, a drop from 49% reported in NatCen’s previous three-month study that ended October 2024.
The NatCen research was conducted using a surveyed sample of 5,191 adults aged over 18 between September 2024 and January this year.
Of those who said they had gambled within the last four weeks, 19% said they only took part in National Lottery or charity lottery draws. If these players are excluded from the overall participation data, gambling participation rates fall to 28%, which is on par with the prior reported three months.
Office for Statistics Regulation publishes review of GSGB study
The UK’s Office for Statistics Regulation, a regulatory arm of the UK Statistics Authority, has undertaken a review of the GSGB survey following concerns raised about its reliability.
In a report published on Thursday, the Office for Statistics Regulation made nine recommendations to improve the GSGB study, but also noted that it sees no reason why the data should not be published.
These recommendations advise the Gambling Commission to provide more detailed information on its quality assurance and validation processes, as well as to clearly communicate potential biases that may affect the GSGB estimates that are in the statistical releases.
It has asked the Gambling Commission to create a GSGB user engagement strategy. This would detail how users could get involved in the study’s development. It has also recommended that the Gambling Commission broaden its stakeholder network and collaborate further with producers of other official statistics.
“While there are still some areas that require further exploration and improvement, we have not seen evidence to suggest that the statistics are not fit for publication,” the Office for Statistics Regulation said.
“Currently, the GSGB provides the most regular estimates of gambling when compared to other surveys of this nature undertaken by official statistics producers.”
The Office for Statistics Regulation has also recommended that the Gambling Commission explain what the data can and can’t be used for.
Ed Humpherson, director general for the Office for Statistics Regulation, said in a statement: “I understand that the Gambling Commission has already started to take action to address some of our findings and recommendations.
“I welcome this proactive approach and encourage the commission to publicly set out the progress it has made.”
Lottery participation falls, online play upticks slightly
In the most recent data from the GSGB study, the Gambling Commission reported that lottery games remain the most popular gambling activity in Great Britain, but that their participation has fallen since October, from 37% to 34%.
After lottery, the most popular gambling activities were scratchcards at 12% and betting at 10%. Online instant win games stood at 7%.
Online gambling participation rates reported by the study were 37% during the last three-month period. However, once lottery draw-only players are excluded from responses, this falls to 17%, up slightly by one percentage point on the prior period.
The Gambling Commission reported at the start of the month there was a 7% year-on-year increase in online gross gambling yield for the first quarter, helped by double-digit growth for online slots.
Data from the Gambling Commission placed GGY at £1.45 billion ($1.93 billion) for the three months to 31 March. This beat the £1.34 billion in the same period last year, but fell 5.8% short of the £1.54 billion in Q4.
Consumers played a total of 23.4 billion spins during the quarter, a 6% increase on last year, while average accounts also climbed 6% to 4.5 million. The latter was a new quarterly high for the slots segment.
It should be noted that in the NatCen study, in terms of age groups present in the sample size, 6% of the respondents were aged 18 to 24, while that age group is estimated to account for 11% of Great Britain’s adult population.
Additionally, the age group 65 to 74 made up 18% of the study but consists of 12% of Great Britain’s population.
