Online gambling in the UK continues to grow, as land-based contracts

The UK Gambling Commission has released its numbers for the gambling market in the United Kingdom covering both the land-based and online sectors for the period known as Q1 2024-2025. The newest analysis looks at the period from April 2024 through June 2024, and it also juxtaposes it with the same period from a year earlier.

UK data reveals strong momentum behind the online gambling sector

The immediate highlight has to do with the building up momentum of the online gambling sector which saw online total gross gambling yield hit £1.46bn for a total of 24.5bn bets and spins placed across Great Britain’s licensed online operators.

This marks an 11% jump in the number of bets placed by gamblers during the surveyed period. Yet, iGaming was not the only sector to demonstrate strength, the UKGC explained in its update, with real event betting gross gaming yield also inching up 16% on an annual basis to £625m.

*Gross gaming revenue of online operations.

However, there were fewer bets placed overall, the regulator observed. In terms of other notable trends, slot gross gaming yield inched up to £642m on an annual basis, a 10% increase. There were 22.4bn placed on slot machines in the period between April and June 2024, which the regulator refers to as Q1.

According to the regulator, there was also an increase in the number of players who had spent longer than an hour playing slots – an increase of 8% year-over-year to 9.7m sessions. There was a slight drop in the average session length in minutes for slots, however, with the April-June 2024 period observing 17 minutes per session, compared to 18 minutes from a year earlier.

Retail betting takes a slight hit

The retail betting market has contracted, however, comparing Q1 2023/2024 and Q1 2024/2025, according to the UKGC’s data. Over-the-counter retail betting a year earlier stood at £180m, only to drop to £168m in the latest reporting period.

Self-service betting terminals, however, notched a small increase from £115m in Q 2023/2024 to £124m in Q1 2024/2025. Retail slot machines lost slight momentum with the numbers inching down from 2023’s £292m to £290m in the observed periods.

Back to the iGaming sector, casino operations that excluded slots but were conducted online also grew to £160m from £146m a year earlier. Online poker did see a small contraction in Q1 2024-2025, with £14m compared to £16.3m in Q1 2023-2024 based on the activity's gross gaming revenue.

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