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UKGC Shares 2016 Gambling Insights

Fresh research has just been published by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) in a new report into the participation and engagement of British gamblers, alongside other topics. There was a lot of research to take from the report, but some of the findings were more notable than others.

Key Findings

The research was performed in 2016 and one of the biggest findings was that 48% of the respondents has place a bet in the past four weeks prior to the study. Comparatively, this represented a 3% increase on the respondents who were surveyed in 2015.

When it came to gender, it emerged that men were more active in gambling during 2016. The UKGC found that 53% of men gambled in 2016, rising from 50% in 2015, while female respondents were 44% over both years, remaining static compared to the males.

Device Preferences

The UKGC was also able to determine that 17% of the respondents placed their wagers with an online operator. An overwhelming 97% of those respondents chose to place their wagers at home, which is the same percentage as the 2015 respondents.

A key finding from the devices revealed that mobile gambling had risen from 33% of respondents in 2015 to 43% in 2016. Based on the finding above, however, it seems that betting on the go is not the main driving factor for players to use their mobile devices.

Problem Gambling

The UKGC was also keen to analyse the issue of problem gambling among British players. After analysing a period of 12 months, it emerged that only 0.7% of respondents opened up to being problem gamblers. Nevertheless, this represented a rise on the 0.5% of problem gamblers who were discovered in the 2015 survey.

Then came the finding that 5.5% of British gamblers identified as being at-risk gamblers in 2016. Moving forward, the UKGC’s James Green promised that the authority would do more to protect British players from the potentially negative effects.