UKGC Publishes Further Data Showing Impact of COVID-19 Lockdown Easing on Online Gambling Behaviour

The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has published further data showing how online gambling behaviour is reacting to the easing of lockdown measures in Great Britain.

UKGC has used operator data reflecting the months from March 2020 to July 2021 and covers data gathered from digital gambling operators. The latest update published by UKGC contains operator data from July 2021.

The latest online operator data for July 2021 shows:

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• overall activity in the online market remained relatively stable in July. Active players stayed steady while bets increased 5% and gross gambling yield (GGY) decreased 8%
• slots GGY increased 4% to £187m during the period from June to July. The number of spins increased 6% while active players increased 1%
• the number of online slots sessions lasting longer than an hour increased by 4% (to over 2.4m). The average session length remained steady at 19 minutes, with nearly 8% of all sessions lasting more than one hour.

“We recognise that the country is now entering a different phase as we continue adjust to life out of lockdown. We continue to expect extra vigilance from operators as consumers are impacted in different ways by the circumstances. Many people will still feel vulnerable as a result of the length of the pandemic period and further uncertainty about their personal or financial circumstances,” UKGC said.

“It is likely some have picked up new gambling routines and habits during lockdown that may be hard to change as things return to normal, even as normal spending on other things resumes. This could be challenging for some and important for operators to identify through their monitoring.”

“We know that some consumers, such as highly engaged gamblers who play a range of products, are likely to spend more time and money gambling and with high level sporting events which took place over the summer where there were more opportunities for betting customers to gamble. This is relevant to the July dataset reported as it covers the latter half of the Euro 2020 tournament and remains relevant in the future months when the Premier League restarts.”