The UK Gambling Commission’s (UKGC) fresh data showcases the way players’ overall gambling behavior has been influenced by the environmental changes taking place in Great Britain.
The UKGC data has been carefully sourced and collected from important operators in the industry. However, the report is not a comprehensive one, which means the commission has not sourced data from all existing operators in the UK. The report covers the period between March 2020 and December 2022, inclusive. The commission advises against any comparisons made with the industry’s sets of data based on statistics.
This is because the current dataset also includes bonuses and free bets and it is not a complete one in terms of participating operators. The information was collected from a number of online and brick-and-mortar licensed betting operators that are oftentimes found on the high streets in Britain.
The main purpose of the fresh release was to allow a comparison between the third quarter of the financial year 2022-2023 with the third quarter of the financial year 2021-2022. Ultimately, the report wishes to establish the way the gambling market has changed over comparative periods throughout the years.
Gross Gambling Yield Down by 2%, Total Bets and Spins Up
The latest UKGC operator data has shown that the online total gross gambling yield (GGY) has gone down 2% in the period between October-December 2022, compared to the same quarter in the previous year. GGY represents the amount that operators retain after paying players’ winnings and before deducting their operating costs.
According to the fresh datasets, Great Britain’s GGY for Q3 2022-2023 reached the £1.2 billion ($1.43 billion) mark. At the same time, total bets and spins went up 8% during the same period on a year-on-year basis.
British operators also recorded a total number of average monthly active accounts of 3.7 million in the quarter ending December 31, 2022. The figure signals a 13% increase in the quarter compared to the numbers in the same quarter ending December 31, 2021.
At the same time, the number of total bets and spins went up 2% reaching the 3.4 billion mark between Q3 2021-2022 and Q3 2022-2023. Licensed betting operators’ GGY went up 5% to £560 million ($670 million) when comparing the same two quarters.
Customer and Operator Interactions and Slot Sessions
The UKGC report also shows that the number of customer interactions recorded in the third quarter of 2022-2023 went down 10% to 2.9 million when compared to the same quarter in 2021-2022. Most of these interactions have preserved their automated characteristics. At the same time, the number of direct interactions recorded by gaming operators went up by 32% on a YoY basis.
Slots GGY went up 2%, reaching £582 million ($696 million) between the third quarter of 2021-2022 and the third quarter of 2022-2023. The total number of spins also recorded an 8% growth.
The number of online slot sessions that were longer than 60 minutes recorded a rise of 11%, reaching the 9 million mark for the first time since the dataset started to be released to the public.
During the same quarter under discussion, players also engaged in 21% more gambling sessions. Even more, the report shows that 6.5% of all sessions were longer than the 60-minute limit. This represents the lowest percentage since March 2020, when the UKGC initiated the collection of data from operators.
Finally, players engaged in shorter gaming sessions, with the average length of a gaming session being two minutes shorter, from 19 minutes to 17 minutes when compared to the YoY data for the same quarter.
Earlier in the week, the UKGC announced that while it would not be enforcing affordability checks on operators, the latter will need to personally implement these checks on their customers.