GambleAware commissioned research has shown that a large majority of active online gambling accounts in the UK spent relatively low amounts, and were used infrequently, throughout the year, while a small proportion were said to be “used extensively and generated substantial losses”.
‘Exploring Online Patterns of Play’ was conducted by the National Centre for Social Research, and looked at the use of 140,000 active gaming and betting accounts between July 2018 and June 2019.
Undertaken to improve understanding of the online gambling market, seven “major” online operators agreed to supply data to be used in the analysis. It is estimated that these capture more than 85 per cent of the online betting market in Great Britain and over 37 per cent in gaming.
The dataset contained 139,152 accounts, of which 86 per cent (110,211) were used for betting during the one-year study period, with 84,572 used for at least one category of gaming during the same timeframe.
Key findings show that 85 per cent of accounts used for betting spent less than £200 over the period documented, while 90 per cent of gaming accounts had either an overall win or loss of less than £500 for the same period.