KEY TAKEAWAYS
Key Numbers
The Gambling Commission publishes the most complete official count of how much a national gambling market earns, and its newest annual report covers the financial year from April 2025 to March 2026. This page compiles that report’s headline figures for Great Britain, the area the Commission regulates, and sets them beside the previous year’s report.
Operators earned gross gambling yield (GGY) of £17.5 billion from Great Britain’s customers in the year, a 4.4% increase, and £13.2 billion once lotteries are excluded, up 4.7%. Remote casino, betting and bingo, meaning online products, made £8.3 billion, while the land-based sectors made £4.9 billion.
Online casino games were the largest single product at £5.7 billion, with slots accounting for £4.8 billion of that. Over the same year the number of licensed premises fell to 8,081 and the number of betting shops to 5,617. All amounts are in pounds sterling and use the Commission’s own definitions.
What the Commission Measures
The Commission’s industry statistics report gross gambling yield made by licensed gambling operators from Great Britain’s gambling customers, for each customer-facing sector, together with the numbers of licensed operators and premises. The data are reported to the Commission by the operators it licenses and regulates, and the accompanying data file reaches back to the financial year ending March 2009.
Gross gambling yield is the Commission’s measure of market size. It is what operators keep from customers, not the amount customers stake, which is why it is comparable in spirit to the revenue and win figures that American regulators report. The financial year runs from 1 April to 31 March, so 2025-26 is April 2025 to March 2026, and it is not a calendar year. The report uses Great Britain as its geography, so this page uses that name instead of the broader United Kingdom.
The statistics group the market into remote casino, betting and bingo (online play), land-based sectors (arcades, betting shops, bingo halls and casinos), and lotteries, which the Commission reports separately as ticket sales, prizes and contributions to good causes. Since July 2024 operators have reported on harmonised quarterly periods, which is why the Commission can now also publish quarterly releases such as the January to March 2026 report cited below.
Great Britain Market Size by Sector
Table 1 shows how the Commission’s headline figures divide among the three groups. The lottery line is not a headline figure in the Commission’s key facts; it is the difference between the two published totals, so it is shown as an approximate value.
| Group | GGY | Change on prior year | Share of total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Remote casino, betting and bingo | £8.3 billion | +6.9% | 47.4% |
| Land-based (arcades, betting, bingo, casino) | £4.9 billion | +1.1% | 28.0% |
| Lotteries (total less ex-lotteries figure) | about £4.3 billion | not stated | 24.6% |
| Total, all sectors | £17.5 billion | +4.4% | 100% |
| Total, excluding lotteries | £13.2 billion | +4.7% | — |
Remote products contributed 47.4% of the total, land-based sectors 28.0% and lotteries about 24.6%. The shares are calculated with a simple formula, and because the underlying figures are rounded to one decimal place in billions, each share carries a margin of a few tenths of a percentage point.
where: sector GGY is the figure for one group and total GGY is the all-sector figure of £17.5 billion. For remote products, £8.3 billion ÷ £17.5 billion gives 47.4%.
The Commission’s most recent quarterly release, covering January to March 2026, gives the latest quarter on its own: total GGY of £4.4 billion, of which £3.4 billion excluded lotteries, £2.2 billion came from remote casino, betting and bingo, and £1.2 billion from the land-based sectors. A single quarter is not a full year, so the quarterly figures should not be added to or compared with the annual totals without the Commission’s workbook.
Remote, Land-Based and Lottery Breakdown
Online play is dominated by casino games. Table 2 breaks the remote sector into its products.
| Remote product | GGY | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Online casino games | £5.7 billion | of which slots £4.8 billion |
| Remote betting | £2.4 billion | football £1.2 billion; horse racing £769.3 million |
| Remote bingo | £147.8 million | — |
| Remote casino, betting and bingo (total) | £8.3 billion | +6.9% on prior year |
Online casino games produced £5.7 billion, which is 68.7% of the £8.3 billion remote total, and slots alone were £4.8 billion, or 84.2% of online casino GGY. Remote betting made £2.4 billion, 28.9% of the remote total, led by football at £1.2 billion and horse racing at £769.3 million. Because the product figures are each rounded, they add to roughly, not exactly, the £8.3 billion total. The Commission also reported that new account registrations with these operators fell 3.0% to 32.4 million, that 25.7 million accounts were active at the end of the last reporting quarter, and that funds held in customer accounts were £886.6 million, down 13.9% on a year earlier.
The land-based picture is more varied, as Table 3 shows.
| Sector | GGY | Change | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Betting | £2.4 billion | −3.3% | machines £1.2 billion (−0.9%), 49.4% of betting GGY |
| Casino | £933.9 million | +0.4% | games £695.0 million; machines £238.9 million |
| Bingo | £703.8 million | +8.2% | games £242.1 million; machines £461.7 million |
| Arcades | £800.1 million | +10.7% | adult gaming centres £761.4 million (+11.3%); family entertainment centres £38.6 million (−0.5%) |
| All land-based | £4.9 billion | +1.1% | — |
Arcades grew fastest at 10.7% and bingo followed at 8.2%, while non-remote betting fell 3.3% and casinos were nearly flat at 0.4%. The Commission reports gaming machines separately and put total GGY for gaming machines in Great Britain at £2.7 billion, up 4.3%. In the latest quarter there were 191,804 machines in licensed premises.
Lotteries are reported by ticket sales, prizes and good-cause contributions, shown in Table 4.
| Measure | National Lottery | Large society lotteries |
|---|---|---|
| Ticket sales | £7.9 billion (+0.9%) | £1.2 billion (+5.7%) |
| Returned as prizes | £4.5 billion (−0.6%) | £335.6 million (+6.1%) |
| Contribution to good causes | £1.7 billion (+2.8%) | £498.5 million (+2.8%) |
National Lottery ticket sales of £7.9 billion and prizes of £4.5 billion leave about £3.4 billion, and large society lotteries add about £0.9 billion on the same basis (£1.2 billion less £335.6 million); together these come to roughly £4.3 billion, which agrees with the gap between the Commission’s two total GGY figures. The report states the National Lottery’s good-cause contribution as £1.7 billion in its lottery section and as £1.6 billion in its key facts, a difference the report does not explain, so Table 4 uses the lottery section.
Comparison With 2024-25
Table 5 sets the new report beside the previous annual report, published in November 2025. The change column repeats the percentages the Commission states in the 2026 report; where it does not state one, the cell says so, because a percentage worked out from rounded billions would be unreliable.
| Measure | 2024-25 (as published Nov 2025) | 2025-26 (Sept 2026) | Change stated in 2026 report |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total GGY | £16.8 billion | £17.5 billion | +4.4% |
| GGY excluding lotteries | £12.6 billion | £13.2 billion | +4.7% |
| Remote casino, betting and bingo | £7.8 billion | £8.3 billion | +6.9% |
| Land-based sectors | £4.8 billion | £4.9 billion | +1.1% |
| Online casino games | £5.0 billion | £5.7 billion | not stated |
| Remote betting | £2.6 billion | £2.4 billion | not stated |
| Remote bingo | £165.6 million | £147.8 million | not stated |
| Licensed premises | 8,234 | 8,081 | −2.0% |
| Betting shops | 5,825 | 5,617 | −3.6% |
| Operators in the market (31 March) | 2,179 | 2,154 | −1.1% |
Total GGY rose by about £0.7 billion on rounded figures, and the 4.4% growth the Commission states is lower than the 7.3% it reported a year earlier for 2024-25, so growth was slower than a year earlier. Remote growth of 6.9% compares with 13.1% in the previous report. Remote betting and remote bingo were lower than the year before on the published figures, while online casino games were higher.
The percent-change formula is the same one the Commission’s figures imply:
where: current is the 2025-26 figure and prior is the same measure for 2024-25. Working backwards, prior = current ÷ (1 + change), so £17.5 billion ÷ 1.044 gives about £16.8 billion, matching the earlier report. The same check on land-based casino GGY (£933.9 million, up £3.6 million) implies a prior-year figure of £930.3 million, slightly below the £933.8 million published in November 2025, which shows that prior-year figures were revised in the new report.
Methodology & Limitations
Datasets: the Gambling Commission’s Industry Statistics annual report for April 2025 to March 2026 (published 17 September 2026), its quarterly report for January to March 2026 (published the same day), and its annual report for April 2024 to March 2025 (published 25 November 2025). All were accessed in October 2026, and all figures are from the web pages of those publications, not from a re-analysis of the accompanying workbooks.
Calculations: shares in Table 1 and the remote-sector shares divide one published rounded figure by another. The lottery GGY of about £4.3 billion is the all-sector total (£17.5 billion) minus the figure excluding lotteries (£13.2 billion), and was cross-checked against ticket sales less prizes. Implied prior-year figures divide the current figure by one plus the stated change.
Limitations: the Commission rounds most figures to one decimal place in billions, so derived shares and sums are approximate. Prior-year figures were revised between reports, so 2024-25 values in Table 5 are as originally published and may differ slightly from the base used for the stated changes. The data cover Great Britain only and describe operators licensed by the Commission; they are not comparable one-for-one with U.S. regulators’ revenue measures, which define revenue and deductions differently. GGY is not profit, and no tax or cost figures are given here.
Key Figures at a Glance
| Figure | Value | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Total GGY, Great Britain | £17.5 billion (+4.4%) | April 2025 to March 2026 |
| Remote casino, betting and bingo GGY | £8.3 billion (+6.9%) | April 2025 to March 2026 |
| Online casino games GGY | £5.7 billion | April 2025 to March 2026 |
| Land-based GGY | £4.9 billion (+1.1%) | April 2025 to March 2026 |
| Licensed premises / betting shops | 8,081 / 5,617 | 31 March 2026 |
| Gross gambling yield, latest quarter | £4.4 billion | January to March 2026 |
Derived values such as shares are calculated from the published figures using the formulas shown above.
Related Data
For a comparison with the American market, see U.S. commercial gaming market size by year. Lottery figures from American states are compiled in state lottery sales and prizes, and growth in regulated online casino revenue in three states is analyzed in online casino revenue per resident.
Frequently Asked Questions
Sources & References
- Gambling Commission — Industry Statistics, Annual report, financial year April 2025 to March 2026: Official statistics (published 17 September 2026; accessed October 2026)
- Gambling Commission — Industry Statistics, Quarterly report, January to March 2026 (Quarter 4): Official statistics (published 17 September 2026; accessed October 2026)
- Gambling Commission — Industry Statistics, Annual report, financial year April 2024 to March 2025: Official statistics (published 25 November 2025; accessed October 2026)
