UK Gambling Commission release latest participation stats

The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has released its annual report on gambling participation in 2018 covering awareness, behaviour and attitudes.

The datasets were gathered by Populus via a combination of telephone and online surveys with people aged 16 and over.

Key findings from respondents referring to the past four week period at the time of the survey include:

Gambling participation was up 1 percent to 46 percent of respondents who participated in any form of gambling.

Excluding the National Lottery, 32 percent had participated, again up one percent compared to December 2017.

Online gambling was flat with 18 percent of respondents having gambled online.

55 percent of online gamblers did so utilising a mobile phone or tablet.

23 percent of online gamblers had bet in-play.

1.5 percent had played on FOBT machines in a retail bookmaker (2017: 1.4 percent).

0.7 percent of the sample were classified as problem gamblers, 1.1 percent as moderate-risk gamblers and 2.4 percent as low-risk gamblers.

6 percent of the sample had ever self-excluded.

Only 30 percent perceived gambling as fair and felt they could trust the industry, while 38 percent believe gambling is associated with crime.