How Much Do People in the UK Spend on iGaming Activities?

The UK has always been a big market for the iGaming industry. Be it for betting, casino gaming, lotteries, and online gaming, the UK locals are simply willing to spend money on any of these. In fact, the UK gaming industry is now worth over 14 billion pounds. This means that the people of the UK spend billions of money on gambling each year.

The UK Gambling Commission of the UKGC has released figures on how much each gambling sector made in 2018. 40 percent of the gambling revenue made in the UK this year came from the online betting sector and that amounts to over 5.6 billion pounds. 20 percent of the revenues came from the National Lottery which amounts to 3 billion pounds and another 20 percent are from other gambling activities like casino gaming, bingo, and many more.

Sports betting has always been big in the UK and this can be thanks to the fact that the locals are big fans of sports like football and horse racing. The online sports betting industry in the UK alone is now worth over 650 million pounds and it has been growing since 2009 with a rate of 7 percent. The rise of mobile betting has been a great help for the industry. There are now many online bookies out there that offer their services in the UK and as a punter, it would help if you visit online bookie review sites like Efirbet.com to know more about online bookies like William Hill, 22Bet, and many more.

There has been the closure of many betting shops in the UK in the last few years but this didn’t really affect the growth of the industry because of the rise of the online sector. Currently, the online sector is now the bigger chunk of the overall betting market in the UK.

iGaming Trends During the Lockdown

Now that the world is dealing with a health crisis, people are keener on staying at home and doing their activities indoors. This is why there has been a spike in online casino gaming since March. However, since sports events are now making a comeback, the online casino sector is experiencing a dip in revenues. It’s now the sports betting sector that is recovering.

Now, when it comes to the details on how much each UK household is spending on betting or gambling, according to Statista in 2019, the household with the highest tenth gross income would spend around 4.2 pounds a week on gambling. It also makes sense that the lowest ten percent or first decile group of households is spending the least on gambling, which is at 1.5 pounds.

Now, the popularity of gambling in the UK can be beneficial to the economy but it’s also not a secret this also causes problems to some of the locals. It is estimated that over 400,000 people in the UK have gambling problems and this has already caught the attention of the government.

Stricter iGaming Advertising Rules

The UKGC has started to work on ensuring a safer gambling environment for the locals. Part of the newly implemented regulations is imposing a limit on how much people could spend on fixed-odds betting terminals or FOBTs. From 100 pounds, people can now only spend 2 pounds at most when placing their bets on FOBTs.

Now, this became quite a concern for the betting operators in the country. William Hill said that the company would lose around 700 of its betting shops because of this. The company also said that this could result in a decrease in their sales that could be around 100 million pounds a year.

However, analysts have said that this could have a dramatic effect on the gambling problems that the country is facing. And so, even if some players in the industry are expressive on how this could affect their businesses, the government still pushed for it.

The UKGC has also implemented stricter rules when it comes to advertising gambling activities. Gambling operators are now banned from using animated characters from films and television to appear on ads as these characters can easily capture the attention of minors or children. The appearance of celebrities who appear to be under 25 is also not allowed to be part of gambling ads or campaigns.

Now, football remains to be the most wagered on sport in the UK and it’s no longer news that there are football clubs that are in partnerships with betting firms. While this is completely legal and allowed, advertising of betting firms on the shirts of the players will also be banned by 2023. This was recently recommended by the House of Lords committee.