The Gambling Commission has published further data showing how gambling behaviour is reacting to current environmental factors in Great Britain.

The operator data reflects the period between March 2020 and June 2022, inclusive, and covers online and in-person gambling with data from Licensed Betting Operators (LBOs) found on Britain’s high streets.

The Commission advises caution when making any year-on-year comparisons between some months during the period of this data collection, due to differing operating circumstances between 2020 and 2022. Comparison should also not be made with the industry statistics dataset, as the market impact data may include free bets and bonuses.

This update contains operator data to June 2022. The Commission is publishing this data on a quarterly basis. Therefore, this analysis makes a quarter-on-quarter comparison.

The latest operator data, which refers to quarter one (Q1) in the financial year 2022-2023 (91 days) and quarter four (Q4) in the financial year 2021-2022 (90 days), shows:

• online total Gross Gambling Yield (GGY) in Q1 (April to June) was £1.2 billion, an increase of nearly 1% from Q4 (January to March); the overall number of total bets/spins increased 5% from Q4 to Q1, the average monthly active accounts increased 5%;
• slots GGY increased 4% to nearly £565 million between Q4 and Q1; the number of spins increased 5% to 18.7 billion, while the average monthly active accounts increased 4% to 3.6 million per month;
• the number of online slots sessions lasting longer than an hour increased by 5% (to 8.4 million) between Q4 and Q1; the average session length lasted 17 minutes (a decrease of one minute), with approximately 7% of all sessions lasting more than one hour; and
• LBO GGY increased 6% to £584 million between Q4 and Q1, while the number of total bets and spins increased 3% to 3.3 billion.

The Commission says that it continues to expect extra vigilance from operators as consumers are impacted in different ways by the circumstances brought on by the pandemic and the wider economic environment. Many people will still feel vulnerable as a result of the length of the pandemic period, further uncertainty about their personal or financial circumstances or readjusting budgets and time as life returns to normal with a wider set of finance drivers. To read the Commission’s press release in full and for links to the relevant data, click here.