SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
The latest data from the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has shown a steady growth in demand for online gambling across users in Great Britain.
In the report, a comparison is made between the fourth quarter of the financial year 2023 to 2024 (January to March 2024) and Q4 of 2022 to 2023 – offering a look into the market’s fluctuation in the same period year-over-year.
Total online gross gambling yield (GGY) for Q4 stood at £1.4bn – a 5% YoY increase. The two most profitable areas for licensed online operators remain slots and real event betting.
Broken down in numbers, GGY from real event betting went up by 2% to £565m (Q4 22-23: £554m), active monthly player accounts increased by 1% on average, while the number of placed bets decreased by 6%.
Online slots saw growth across every metric. Slots GGY went up 11% YoY to £614m (Q4 22-23: £552m), the number of spins increased by 12%, while the average monthly active accounts were up 7% from last year.
Combined online bets and spins increased by 10% YoY to reach what the UKGC described as a ‘record’ 24 billion total.
The regulator also reminded that quarter-on-quarter data on active accounts could count the same account more than once if said account has participated in more than one vertical. A degree of double counting is also present if an account has been active more than one month for that quarter. However, no other table is affected by this except active accounts data.
Also, high street licensed betting operators experienced a drop in GGY by 3%, as well as a 1% decline in total bets and spins made compared to Q4 2022-23.
The full release reflects data between March 2020 and March 2024 and can be viewed on UKGC’s website.
