Gambling - Commission briefing note on four week Gambling participation

The Gambling Commission have issued a briefing note detailing gambling participation relating to past four week gambling participation. The “key findings” as detailed in the note  are as follows:

• Overall past four week participation in the year to September 2016 is 47%. This is level with the year to September 2015, and also consistent with the figure published in the previous quarterly release. 
• Online gambling participation has increased from 14% in year to September 2015 to 16.5% in year to September 2016. This increase is particularly prominent in 16-24 year olds (likely driven by sports betting, particularly football), and respondents aged 45+ (also driven by betting on football, as well as participating in other lotteries online).
• The most popular activity is still the National Lottery draws, with 31% of respondents participating in the past four weeks. This is still showing a decrease from 33% in year to September 2015, however when looking at the data from individual waves participation appears to have stabilised.
• The latest data also shows increased in participation in the following activities:
  • Scratch cards (12% in year to September 2016) – this increase has also been seen in the recently published Scottish Health Survey data and in the headline findings from the Commission’s Welsh Problem Gambling Survey.
  • Fruit or slot machines (4% in year to September 2016) and sports betting (6% in year to September 2016) – increases likely due to methodology changes explained in section 1.
  • Private betting (6% in year to September 2016) – as this increase is particularly prominent in younger ages we plan to explore this in more depth by adding an open comment option for respondents who state that they have bet privately so that we can find out what they are betting on.

• Problem Gambling (according to the PGSI mini-screen)
  • The overall problem gambling rate for the year to September 2016 is 0.7%. This is an increase of 0.3% since year to September 2015, but is the same as the figure reported in the previous quarterly release.

The Commission points out that it is important to note that these figures do not constitute the Commission’s headline problem gambling rate as this is collected via the much larger Health Surveys. Therefore the figures published in this release should be treated as indicative and with caution.