Gambling Stats in the UK

When it comes to gambling, many people like to try different games. The popularity of online casinos have increased substantially in recent years for many reasons. The data which gets released by the United Kingdom Gambling Commission consists of patterns and statistics that include which games are popular for certain groups of people. The United Kingdom has trends which see horse racing a popular thing to bet on. The data gets released twice a year, so let’s see what it says.

How Many People in the UK Gamble?

This makes for a very interesting read as in 2020 approximately 47% of people in the legal age group had partaken in gambling of somesort. This could be the National Lottery, online casino games or sports betting. 47% may seem like quite a high percentage but it is realistically not as high as it seems when the period of time is taken into consideration. It may not be a surprise to discover that more males gamble than females. 51% of males placed a bet over a trialled four week period in 2020, whilst it was 41% of females. These percentages have not changed too much since 2019, so it shows that the gambling levels remain consistent.

What Do People Bet On?

One of the most favoured gambling activities in Britain is the National Lottery. It probably is not the first thing you think about when hearing the term ‘gambling’ but it still does come under the field. This is slightly different to other lottery games and scratch cards though which were the second most popular field for gambling. 13% of the nation played a lottery of somesort in 2020 which shows the popularity of this type of gambling. 10% of Brits tried their luck on scratchcards. More availability has been given to scratchcards in recent years as despite being associated as something you can buy from the local newsagent, they are now available online to purchase for an instant win.

What may be more surprising is that, according to the data from the UKGC, only 7% of people had a bet on sport in 2020. What were the more popular sports were less of a surprise though with horse racing, football and tennis topping the list.

How Much Money is Involved?

Of course this is an incredibly broad question and can be different for each scenario. The average amount spent per person was £135 for the year of 2020 which works out at £2.60 a week. This can be taken with a pinch of salt though as it cannot take into account how often people bet, or how much they stake each time. For example, if someone bets a fiver just the one time, their average will be incredibly low, yet will still get included in the data. This can balance out though with the high rollers who stake thousands of pounds each week. It is not just gamblers that are putting money into this sector though. £1.2 billion of taxpayers’ money has gone towards helping gambling addiction so people can change for the better. The gambling sector also helps contribute towards charities as the National Lottery donated £1.6 billion to charity each year.

Careers in Gambling

The gambling sector does not just help to provide players with lots of fun, it helps create thousands of different career pathways. There are roughly 100,000 people employed in this industry. There are so many different gambling related jobs out there, some of them do not even require the employee to know anything about gambling itself. For example, if you are the accounts manager of a company like Ladbrokes, you do not really need to know the rules of the different games which the site offers, but make sure you are clued up with the financial side to the site. The industry is currently worth around £15 billion which shows how much money is there to be made with a career in this area and why so many are currently employed.