It’s an undeniable fact that gambling and betting took a major hit from the Coronavirus outbreak. With major gambling venues closed and live events

Online Gambling Before the Pandemic – Facts & Figures

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2020-07-02 11:27:43

It’s an undeniable fact that gambling and betting took a major hit from the Coronavirus outbreak. With major gambling venues closed and live events cancelled or postponed, betting and wagers took a sharp drop.

The real effects of the pandemic on gambling will be most visible somewhere this time next year. But for now, we have the data we took the plunge from to look at.

Even though the UKGC reported an increase in some fields of online gambling during the peak weeks of lockdown, figures show that gambling in the UK has remained relatively stable in the course of a year. The data gathered is based on participation in gambling activities in the past 4 weeks and shows some interesting shifts.

47% of respondents in the survey age 16+ have participated in gambling activities in 2019, which is just a 1 percentage point change from 2018. No change is observed in male participation (51%), while female participants rose from 41% to 43%.

An increase is observed among participants age 16-24 (from 36% in 2018 to 40% in 2019) and age 35-44 – another 6% change from 44% to 50%. Those same age groups have marked respectively 5 and 6 percentage points increase when it comes to online gambling participation.