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The UK gambling sector won an extra £1bn from punters in the year to March, according to new data expected to buoy calls for the chancellor to raise betting taxes in Wednesday’s budget.
Betting companies made £12.6bn from services excluding lotteries in latest 12-month reporting period, the Gambling Commission revealed on Tuesday, marking a 9.3% rise on the £11.5bn the industry won during the previous year.
The numbers were inflated by an almost 15% increase in winnings from online casino players, which rose to £5.0bn from £4.4bn during the prior period. The £5bn of online casino game winnings are now 55% higher than at the start of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.
Online casino games have been criticised for being one of the most addictive forms of gambling available in the UK, leading to calls for a rise in online gaming duty by campaigners including former prime minister Gordon Brown.
The release of the data comes after the gambling industry has been actively lobbying the Treasury in an apparent effort to persuade Rachael Reeves to shy away from announcing large rises in a range of betting duties during her set-piece speech to the Commons on Wednesday.
The industry has the backing of some powerful supporters, with the Sun newspaper running a campaign called “Save Our Bets”. Last week the tabloid reported that Joanne Whittaker, the boss of the bookmaking chain BetFred, is arguing that even a modest increase to machine games duty – levied on machines located in premises that give cash prizes such as slot and quiz machines – will have a “devastating impact” and “significantly” cut the industry’s tax contribution, rather than contribute more revenue to the Treasury.
Whittaker’s latest intervention follows similar messaging from Betfred last month, when the company said it would close all 1,287 of its high street betting shops if Reeves raised taxes on the gambling industry. Earlier that month the company behind William Hill also said it was considering closing up to 200 betting shops if the chancellor raised taxes.
Elsewhere in the data, adult gaming centres (AGCs) reported that their winnings rose by 10% during the 12 months to March, with the industry making £682.9m from its customers, up from £623.3m.
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AGCs have attracted the attention of some anti-gambling campaign groups because they appear to target poorer areas of the country and have been criticised for failing to help problem gamblers self-exclude.
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