U.K. Online Gambling Shows Slight Growth

November 3, 2008 (InfoPowa News) — The Gambling Commission has released its latest statistics on remote (Internet, mobile and Interactive television) gambling in the United Kingdom, providing information for the period from December 2007 through September 2008. It sets out the findings from questions asked through an independent omnibus survey conducted by ICM Research. The annual data is published quarterly, based on an updated sample of 8,000 interviews.
 
Key findings are that this year to date, 9.3 percent of the 8,000 adults surveyed said they had participated in at least one form of remote gambling through a computer, mobile phone or interactive/digital TV in the previous month. This compares with the 2007 figure of 8.8 percent and the 2006 figure of 7.2 percent.  
 
Importantly, the survey found that 90.5 percent of respondents said they had not participated in any form of remote gambling.
 
Those participating in remote gambling remain more likely to be male than female, and are more likely to be aged 18 to 44.
 
The growth in participation in remote gambling is explained largely by increased online participation in the National Lottery. If those only playing National Lottery games remotely are excluded, only 5.4 percent of respondents had participated in remote gambling in the year to September 2008, a slight rise on 2007 (5.2 percent) and 2006 (5.1 percent).  
 
Overall, in the year to September 2008, 6.7 percent of respondents said they had gambled remotely on the National Lottery/Tickets for the National Lottery draw in the previous month.
 
Remote gambling via a computer, laptop or handheld device was most popular (7.5 percent of all adult respondents), followed by gambling via mobile phone (2.7 percent) and interactive/digital TV (2.0 percent).
 
Readers can access the survey data at http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/Client/mediadetail.asp?mediaid=151.