The Gambling Commission in Great Britain has released research related to “Statistics on participation and problem gambling for the year to March 2022,” with finding derived from its regular quarterly telephone survey. Yonder Consulting conducted a survey in which about 4,000 residents aged 16 and older were interviewed over the telephone using representative sampling and standard methodologies.
Overall gambling participation was measured and compared with previous similar periods. The surveyors then broke out more specific numbers related to in-person and online gambling as well as reporting on the overall problem gambling rate.
According to a summary of the report available on the regulator’s official government website, overall participation in gambling activity over the last four weeks prior to answering the survey had increased to 43%, which the summary called ‘significantly’, and an increase of 3% year on year over the same year to date period in 2021. While an increase, participation was still down about four points from the pre-pandemic participation rate of 47% which was logged to March 2020.
In person gambling participation in the United Kingdom increased some three percentage points from 23% to March 2021 to 26% participation in terrestrial gambling for the same period this year. This year’s numbers were still below pre-pandemic levels. Q1 is the last mostly stable cohort to compare without reaching back to 2019 as in-person gambling restrictions began on March 23, 2020. This means that each upcoming quarterly report will need to be adjusted or taken with assumptions that may or may not be statistically viable due to missing representative data for comparative analysis.
Steady Growth in Online Gambling Participation
Online gambling in England continued an upward trajectory but remained what researchers determined to be statistically stable at 26%. The number was 24% in 2021 and 21% in 2020.
The new report states that the “overall headline problem gambling rate” was statistically stable even though it was 0.2% which is but half of the number for the same period of 2021 where it was at 0.4% and 0.6% the prior year.
The methodology given on the front page of the in-depth report does not qualify or quantify how a consistent three-year trend could be statistically insignificant. The layman could certainly see those numbers as decreasing at a relatively significant rate with this year’s being half of the last year and only one-third of the number reported the year prior. However, a halving of the number for the entire year of 2021 was stated as not statistically significant with a footnote that simply stated “At the 95% level of confidence”.
A further look at sample size, margins of error, and the fact that the results were based on a 50% normal distribution averaged annually with a margin of error of 1.55% at the 95% confidence level means that any deviation of less than 0.775% would be ‘statistically not significant’.
Since the overall problem gambling percentage includes all risk levels, the numbers for moderate or low risk could then be better seen as statistically irrelevant rather than not significant. However, they were statistically stable at 0.9% and 1.4% respectively compared to the same period last year – which saw a significant decrease comparing the periods of January 1 through March 2020.
Industry Group Finds the Numbers Relevant
UK gambling industry group the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) noted on its website that the drop from 0.4% to 0.2% represented a real-world decline in problem gambling from 225,000 problem gamblers down to 113,000. The group used the data to implore regulators in the UK to not “pander to the anti-gambling lobby”.
BGC also noted that the drop in numbers has to be seen against the backdrop of a growing “black market” of sites not licensed by the Gambling Commission but still accepting punters from Great Britain. Unbiased or non-invested observers would most likely refer to the UK as a grey market as it is not a criminal offense for UK players to gamble at sites that are “differently licensed” such as in Malta, and Gibraltar, or even the Caribbean.
That does not diminish the fact that over-regulation can drive players out of a white market if they can get better odds, more lucrative bonuses, and a wider range of betting products from locally unlicensed operators.
The industry group noted that the number of British gamblers using off-shore or “unlicensed” sites has more than doubled in just the last two years and that bets made at non-UKGC-licenced operations exceed a billion pounds.
Referring to other European countries that place stringent requirements on regulated operators, the group mentioned Norway where, according to a report by PwC, “black market” operators suck up as much as 66% of the country’s bets but the problem gambling rates still hold steady at about 1.4%. France reportedly has a similar situation on its hands with a strict monopoly penalizing outside operators; 57 percent of the betting capital staked offshore, and a problem gambling rate of 1.6 percent of all adults.
Betting and Gaming Council’s Chief Executive, Michael Dugher commented: “These newly released figures are further evidence of that positive progress and underline our calls for ministers to take a genuinely evidence based approach to the upcoming White Paper and not pander to the anti-gambling lobby.
“Our initiatives have included using advertising to promote safer gambling tools like deposit limits and time-outs, investing more in research and treatment, changes to advertising, stronger protections for younger people and introducing tough new rules on VIP schemes”.
Dugher concluded by stating: “Ministers should not drive customers into the arms of the black market by introducing intrusive personal checks for non-problem gamblers and those not at risk, or by taking away the offers that punters in a highly competitive market enjoy.”
Source: New Figures Confirm Another Drop In Problem Gambling Rates In The Uk, Betting & Gaming Council, May 04, 2022