British online market worth £4.5bn, new figures show

Britain’s online gambling market generated £4.5bn in gross gaming yield (GGY) across the 12 months to March 2016, making it bigger than both the retail sector and the National Lottery, new figures released today show.

In what was the first set of full-year numbers released by the Gambling Commission since the introduction of the Point of Consumption licensing regime in November 2014, online made up 33% of the entire gambling market.

Casino was the biggest driver of the online segment with £2.6bn of GGY, of which online slots contributed a huge £1.75bn – more than the £1.6bn of GGY generated by online sports betting across the year.

Online bingo and betting exchanges were of a similar size at £153m and £152m of GGY respectively. Meanwhile peer-to-peer poker, which was included in the casino numbers, amounted to £98.7m.

The report also gave figures on the number of self-exclusions over the 12-month period, with 611,000 accounts being suspended. This stacks up against 180,000 self-exclusions in the four months prior.

Roughly 45,000 (7%) accounts were re-activated following the expiry of their temporary suspension, however, with no industry-wide exclusion register yet in place, this may well be down to customers moving on to play at alternative operators rather than a curtailment of gambling altogether.

Meanwhile, following a period of industry consolidation and instances of relocation overseas, remote staff in Britain fell 15% from 7,423 to 6,275.

The National Lottery generated £3.4bn in GGY, high street betting shops £3.3bn and bricks and mortar casinos £1bn.