UK Gambling Industry at an All Time High

The UK has one of the world’s most progressive and thriving gambling markets, which each year seems to experience exponential growth. The latest results released by the UK Gambling Commission have proved no exception, either, and for the 12-month period between October 2015 and September 2016, the industry generated a record-setting £13.8 billion ($17.8bn) in revenue.
Furthermore, online gambling accounted for £4.5 billion ($5.8bn) of that tally, marking a 7% increase over the April 2015 to March 2016 period, with the sector constituting a 32% share of the gambling market’s overall business. As expected, online casino games generated the lion’s share of Gross Gambling Yield (GGY) at £2.4 billion, with slots accounting for £1.6 billion of that amount. Betting exchanges are also included in the numbers, with the sector dominated by the country’s national sport, soccer, which generated £1.4 billion ($1.8bn) in revenues, and a subsequent profit of £333.4 million ($432m).
The National Lottery continues to be one of the UK’s biggest gambling sectors, which despite falling by 3% between October 2015 and September 2016, still produced a huge £7.4 billion in revenue, with £1.7 billion subsequently returned to the community by way of good causes.
Meanwhile, the country’s 147 land-based casinos enjoyed a 15% improvement in their business, with revenues reaching £1.2 billion ($1.5bn), while fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs) located in betting shops throughout the UK contributed a further £1.8 billion, or 56% of total land-based revenue. However, certain groups have called for a curb on these addictive machines, and as a spokesperson for the Campaign for Fairer Gambling commented recently:
“The bizarre experiment to allow high stakes, high speed roulette in betting shops is delivering huge profits for the bookmakers at the expense of an even greater cost to society and the economy. More jobs would be created if money lost on FOBTs was spent elsewhere.”
Finlly, the UK has a population of 65 million people, with the $17.8 billion the gambling industry produced a mere fraction that of the US, which has 321 million people, and regularly generates around $70 billion a year from gamblers, as well as a further $70 billion from lotteries.