The Gambling Commission which oversees and regulates gambling and gaming law in the UK has published figures showing a 5% growth in the final quarter of the latest financial year.

The increase which brought the figure to £1.36bn is said by the organization to be driven by slots which saw an 11% rise year-on-year. Online slots saw £614 million during this reporting period.

Not only did people in the UK spend more on slots, but the number of sessions increased by 7%, making this the highest number of total sessions in a quarter.

“The number of online slots sessions lasting longer than an hour increased by 2 percent year-on-year to 9.5 million…

“Approximately 6 percent of all sessions lasted in excess of one hour during the quarter, the lowest percentage recorded in this dataset. The average session length decreased to 17 minutes when compared to 18 minutes in Quarter 4 2022 to 2023.”

While bets placed over the counter decreased by 1%, the number of bets created on self-service betting terminals increased by 8% year-on-year to 40 million.

Offline betting reported for Quarter 4 “decreased by 3 percent from Quarter 4 last year to £568 million, while the number of total bets and spins decreased 1 percent to 3.3 billion.”

The decrease in bets placed in a physical betting shop doesn’t come as a huge surprise as the number of high street bookmakers in the UK has plunged in the last few years. Almost 2,400 stores have shut their doors for good over the last five years.

Gambling Commission to bring in new financial vulnerability checks

On Wednesday (May 1) the Gambling Commission confirmed that light-touch financial vulnerability checks will be coming into force from August.

This will impact those who deposit more than £500 per month to use on gambling, but this will be reduced to £150 per month from February next year. The checks will only use publicly available data.

A pilot of enhanced frictionless financial risk assessment will also take place which is expected to last six months, with a focus on protecting people when gambling.

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