The report from the Gambling Commission shows that betting and spins reached record levels between October and December.
United Kingdom.- The British Gambling Commission has reported that the gross performance of online gambling reached £1.540m in the last quarter of 2024, between October and December.
This represents a 21 percent increase year-on-year and 16.7 percent compared to the third quarter. The number of bets and spins increased by 8 percent year-on-year to a record £25.900m, despite a 3 percent drop in the number of active player accounts.
The online slots generated £709m, a 15 percent increase year-on-year. The number of spins reached 23.9 billion, a 9 percent increase, and the average number of active monthly accounts increased by 10 percent.
The regulator noted that the figures may have been affected because an operator reclassified some of its products as slots. The average duration of online slots sessions increased slightly to 18 minutes, and the proportion of sessions lasting more than an hour was 6 percent, compared to 7 percent the previous year.
After slots, the next largest source of revenue was betting on real events, which contributed £647m to the total. This is a 38 percent increase year-on-year and the highest total since the second quarter of 2021. The increase occurred despite a 7 percent drop in the number of bets and a 3 percent decrease in active monthly accounts.
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The online casinos that are not slots generated £151.9m, a 2 percent increase, while the performance of online poker fell 19 percent to £12.7m. Meanwhile, the figure for virtual betting fell 14 percent to £9.5m and the gross performance of esports betting fell 12 percent to £3.7m. Other online gambling games generated £1.9m, a 58 percent increase.
The operators of physical betting generated £592m, a 5 percent increase. In this case, the number of bets and spins fell by 4 percent, to 3.1 billion. Gaming machines generated £279.7m, while £159.8m was generated at the counter and £152.6m through self-service betting terminals. The number of machine sessions decreased by 4 percent, to 22.8 million, but the number of sessions lasting more than an hour increased by 6 percent, to 621,772.
