The latest industry data, captured by the UK Gambling Commission, reveals that betting firms enjoyed an 11% increase in their gross gambling yield in the second quarter of 2024.
The numbers, collated from the second quarter of the financial year (July to September), show that sports betting yield rose by 6% – despite the number of bets being placed falling.
Meanwhile, online casinos collectively revealed that the gross gambling yield from slots increased by some 16%….although there was some troubling news on a rise in gaming sessions lasting more than an hour.
The launch of the Gambling Harms Action Lab, confirmed this week, could perhaps not be better timed….
Up and Up
The market impact data reveals a largely positive uptick in performance for the UK gambling sector in quarter two this year, compared with the same period in 2023.
All told, the total gross gambling yield for all online wagering between July and September was £1.32 billion, which was a real terms increase of 11% on the second quarter of 2023.
Most pleasingly for operators, the number of active accounts for the quarter increased 8% when compared to 2023, which suggests that their marketing efforts are working.
There was a curious anomaly within the sports betting niche. The actual gross gambling yield for bookmakers and betting sites reached £453 million, which was a year-on-year increase of 6%.
The number of active betting accounts increased by 9% too, and yet the total number of bets placed fell by 10%.
On the casino side of things, there were reasons to be cheerful – despite fears that the niche will be hit hardest by upcoming regulatory changes.
The gross gambling yield for online slots in quarter two was £680 million, which was an increase of some 6% on 2023, while the total number of spins rose to 23.3 billion – some 13% higher year-on-year.
Some of the other numbers to emerge from the data are far more challenging. Although the average length of gaming session remained approximately the same at 17 minutes, the number of individual sessions lasting more than an hour increased by some 9%.
Although the number of gaming sessions lasting an hour or more decreased as an overall percentage of all sessions, it’s still alarming to see so many players spending so long at their screens playing slots and table games.
Taking Action
A new initiative aimed at reducing gambling harms has been announced.
The Commission has joined forces with the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute to launch the Gambling Harms Action Lab.
The programme, which will last for three years, will see the two organisations work collaboratively with financial services providers in a bid to reduce the number of punters and gamers experiencing gambling-related harm.
The aim is to provide a more comprehensive ‘toolkit’ of options for punters looking to limit their gambling without necessarily having to self-exclude. One such tool, which enables individuals to put a gambling block on their bank account, has been praised by the people behind the new initiative.
Monzo and Starling, two online banking firms, were the first to allow their customers to block gambling sites as far back as 2018. Since then, other providers – including Halifax, Lloyds and HSBC – have followed suit, with a new range of measures that allow users to ‘freeze’ their debit cards for as long as 72 hours to prevent them from ‘impulsive’ gambling.
In 2021, Monzo and a score of industry campaigners called on the government to introduce a new law that would make it mandatory for all UK banks to offer gambling blocks to their account holders.
Tim Miller, the executive director of the Gambling Commission, spoke at the launch of the Gambling Harms Action Lab on Wednesday. He reiterated the ‘positive role’ that the financial services sector could play in the tackling of gambling-related harm, and revealed his desire for a ‘range of perspectives’ on how to understand, and combat, problem gambling behaviours.
“Financial services, providing access to their anonymised consumer data, has allowed us to work with Warwick Business School to start building that much richer understanding of how harms develop and how they can be addressed,” Miller said.
He also revealed the ultimate ambition of the Action Lab:
“To use the extensive understanding of consumer behaviours and experiences that financial services have to build an ever-stronger evidence base to identify consumer protections and interventions that actually work.”