UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has published the newest data about the gambling behaviour of local customers amid the existing environmental factors in the country.
The data, which was provided by local gambling operators, reflects the period from March 2020 to December 2022, and covers both in-person and online gambling services offered by British high-street Licensed Betting Operators (LBOs). The gambling regulatory body noted that a comparison should not be made with the industry statistics dataset, as the newest dataset may include bonuses and free bets, and does not include data from all licensed companies operating in the UK gambling market.
The latest release made by the UKGC compares the third quarter of the financial year 2022/2023 with the third quarter of the financial year 2021/2022, by taking into consideration the way the market has changed in the comparative period for more than a year.
The watchdog of the UK gambling sector still expects attentiveness from licensed gambling businesses because customers are impacted in different ways by the existing economic environment in the country. A large number of people are expected to feel financially vulnerable as they face further uncertainty regarding their personal or financial circumstances in a period of increased living costs and recession.
Total Number of Customer Interactions Falls by 10%, While Number of Active Player Accounts Increases by 13%
According to the latest operator data, the overall online Gross Gambling Yield (GGY) in the third fiscal quarter – from October to December – totalled £1.2 billion. The result represented a 2% decline from the third fiscal quarter of the previous year. Licensed betting operators in the UK reported that their Gross Gambling Yield rose by 5% to £560 million from the third quarter of 2021/2022 to the third quarter of 2022/2023.
The UK Gambling Commission also revealed that the overall number of bets and/or spins rose by 8% on a year-on-year basis, while at the same time, the average number of monthly active player accounts rose by 13% to 3.7 million a month on year-on-year for the aforementioned quarter.
The country’s gambling regulatory body revealed that slots GGY rose by 2%, reaching £582 million in the period from the third quarter of 2021/2022 to the third quarter of 2022/2023.
The number of online slots sessions that lasted for more than an hour, rose by 11% year-on-year over the third fiscal quarter for more than 9 million for the first time in that exact dataset. There was also a significant 21% increase in the equivalent time period in the overall sessions, with 6.5% of all sessions lasting for more than one hour during the quarter. That was the lowest percentage rate that has been recorded since the UK Gambling Commission started collecting such data almost three years ago, in March 2020.
The length of the average gaming session was 17 minutes, which was 2 minutes shorter year-on-year.
A 10% decline in the number of customer interactions was registered in the third quarter, with them reaching 2.9 million in comparison to the interactions registered in the same period a year earlier. Most of the interactions remained automated in nature. Still, the number of direct interactions undertaken by local gambling companies has increased by 32% on an annual basis.
- Author
Olivia Cole
