British players lost in gambling £ 13.8 billion last year

According to the United Kingdom Gaming Commission (UKGS) data, for the period from October 2015 to September 2016, British players lost £ 13.8 billion ($17.9 billion) in gambling, which is 2.9% more than in the previous year.

According to the UKGS report, £ 1.8 billion ($2.3 billion) was lost on fixed-rate betting terminals (FOBT), which are usually located at the betting offices. This amount exceeds the same indicator for the previous period, although the number of FOBT terminals during this time increased by only 9%.

The FOBT terminals have recently become the subject of heated discussions in the UK on the part of the Labor Party and the Liberal Democratic Party, which have actively supported the limitation of the maximum stake amount, thereby helping to reduce the number of problematic players.

According to information provided by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), in the same period, bookmakers operating in the UK market earned only about £ 333.4 million ($432.3 million) of net profit on football bets.

The UKGS report also showed that the online gambling remote sector comprises 32% of the total gambling market in the UK. At the same time, iGaming’s gross income for the period under the review is amounted to £ 4.5 billion (5.8 billion), more than 66% of this revenue comes from slot machines.

Sales of the National Lottery in the UK are amounted to £1.7 billion, showing a negative growth of 3% compared to the previous period. Despite this, the amount of donations from the sale of the national lottery increased by 9%, from April 2015 to March 2016.

The gross income of British gambling operators in bingo declined from £688 to £682.3 million ($884.2 million). This result was significantly affected by the decrease in the number of bingo operating rooms in the UK. The figures for table games and gaming machines reached £1.2 billion ($1.6 billion).

Insignificant growth was shown by the offline sportsbetting market, showing an increase from 3.3 to 3.4 billion pounds of gross income of bookmakers.

The UKGS report is a preliminary review of the data collected during the gambling sector survey conducted by the authorities in preparation for the industry reforms. The results of the government monitoring of the gambling industry will be published in the next few weeks.

The British authorities are pursuing a tough policy towards the gambling industry. Over the past six months, gambling operators and bookmakers have been under state supervision, the purpose of which was to approve stricter legislation already this year.

The Gambling Commission has also informed that David Pemberton will be serving as its Chief Operating Officer and will manage all the regulator’s corporate services like HR, finance, planning and risk.