Betting in the United Kingdom - statistics & facts
Renowned stock trader Jesse Livermore once said, “I don’t believe in luck, I believe in probability.” There are few industries where this sentiment applies as accurately as the betting sector. History has shown that bookmakers have consistently found ways to turn a profit, however, the betting industry in the United Kingdom has faced some challenging years since the coronavirus pandemic halted a large chunk of professional sporting events between 2020 and 2021. While the gross gambling yield (GGY) of the betting industry in Great Britain has since increased, growing to 2.48 billion British pounds in the 2022/23 fiscal year, it remained around 800 million British pounds shy of the 2018/19 figure.
Looking to the future, the UK’s betting industry is faced with increasing pressure for greater regulation, with the surge in online betting making it increasingly easier for problem gamblers to make spur-of-the-moment bets. With a series of restrictive reforms for online gambling already set in motion by the Gambling Commission, the probability of the betting industry looking the same in 20 years’ time is small.
Is online betting replacing in-person betting?
The total number of betting shops in Great Britain has been on a gradual decline since 2012, when shops numbered over 9,000. In 2023, the number of betting shops stood at less than 6,000. However, one silver lining for the UK’s betting industry has been the unfettered growth of the online sports betting industry, which has for the most part filled in the gaps left by the physical betting industry. Between 2017 and 2023, the market size of the UK’s online sports betting sector went from 2.29 billion U.S. dollars to 4.21 billion U.S. dollars; this figure is projected to reach as high as 5.69 billion U.S. dollars by 2029. At the forefront of this growth is betting giants such as bet365 and Flutter Entertainment, the latter of which owns Sky Bet, Betfair, and Paddy Power among other gambling brands, and generated more than 2.8 billion U.S. dollars in revenue from sports betting and iGaming in the UK and Ireland in 2023 alone.How much tax is paid on bets?
Since 2002, the rates of general and pool betting duty set by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in the UK have been set at 15 percent. This means that for every general and pool bet made in the UK, 15 percent of profits made by the bookmaker is paid in tax to the UK government. These rates stood in stark contrast to those from twenty years previously, when pool betting duty was fixed at 42.5 percent and general betting duty was only eight percent. Duly, pool betting, which historically had a far firmer footing in the UK’s betting industry than today, made up at least one-third of all betting duty receipts recorded by HMRC between 1986 and 1994. In 2023, total betting duty receipts totaled approximately 680 million British pounds, of which general betting receipts made up a 99 percent share.Looking to the future, the UK’s betting industry is faced with increasing pressure for greater regulation, with the surge in online betting making it increasingly easier for problem gamblers to make spur-of-the-moment bets. With a series of restrictive reforms for online gambling already set in motion by the Gambling Commission, the probability of the betting industry looking the same in 20 years’ time is small.
