UK Gambling Commission’s Head of Statistics, Helen Bryce, has declared that the gambling regulator will publish the first annual Gambling Survey for Great Britain report on July 25.
In addition, the UKGC detailed within its latest wave of Gambling Survey for Great Britain data that overall gambling participation has remained consistent with wave one.
Conducted by NatCen, the GSGB second wave asked for survey participants from across the country between November 2023 and February 2024, of which 5,003 people aged 18 or over took part.
The regulator noted that GSGB data is “not comparable to previous gambling survey publications due to changes in the methodology”.
Like the first wave published earlier this year in March, the UKGC stated that the wave focuses on gambling activity participation, in addition to how and why people gamble.
Of the survey respondents, 48 per cent said they had participated in gambling in the past four weeks, which was the same proportion from the previous wave. 21 per cent only took part in lottery draws (National Lottery or other charity lotteries). Excluding lottery draws, gambling participation was only at 27 per cent.
Males aged between 35 and 64 years old were the largest gambling participation demographic during the period. However, when lottery draw players are removed, the largest gambling participation age range decreases to males between 18 and 44.
Online gambling participation rate stood at 36 per cent in the four weeks, dropping to only 14 per cent once lottery draw players were removed. In-person gambling participation stood at 29 per cent but fell to 18 per cent when excluding lottery draws. 19 per cent of participants had taken part in both online and in-person gambling.
In terms of gambling activity, the most popular were the National Lottery (31 per cent), other charity lotteries (15 per cent), scratchcards (13 per cent), betting (nine per cent) and instant wins (six per cent), all figures which were consistent with data seen in wave one. Most respondents also gambled for fun/enjoyment or monetary reasons.
Those who had gambled in the past 12 months were also asked how they felt about their gambling experience, of which 41 per cent rated it positively, while 22 per cent had negative feelings. 37 per cent said they neither loved nor hated their last gambling experience.
The UKGC added that several stakeholders were also interested in the findings from the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale questions that are asked in the GSGB. This data from the pilot, experimental and mainstage surveys has been released.
SWEMWS is a short version of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing scale and measures the population’s wellbeing via seven questions, instead of the 14 in WEMWBS.
As previously mentioned, Bryce revealed that the UKGC will publish the first GSGB annual report on July 25, which will be based on data from the two waves from July 2023 to February 2024, totalling 10,000 responses.
However, the regulator said that future annual reports will be based on four data waves from across the year with 20,000 responses.
The UKGC has stated that this will provide “a comprehensive overview of the gambling behaviours as from the biggest survey of its kind in Great Britain”.
The UKGC’s Head of Statistics commented: “By combining responses across multiple waves we’ll be able to go into more detail about how responses vary across different population subgroups, and will also publish more data in the annual report about the consequences of gambling.”
The next quarterly GSGB wave data will be released on September 12, 2024.