Growing Online Gambling Support in UK

Whilst online gambling has been legal in the UK for quite some time and a huge number of operators are registered there, it is one of the many markets that has seen quite major change in a short period of time in order to protect problem players and make many of the games more fair too – changes include the ban of credit card use for these services, and adjustments to popular game types such as slots too – particularly in line with the Gamstop initiative which aimed at providing preventative measures to protect at risk players too.

These changes had led some to believe support was changing for online gambling in the country, but the latest surveys from the UK Gambling Commission reveal quite the opposite as the suggestion is instead that support is growing – the impact of Gamstop is being felt as the rate of problem players had halved in the past year from 0.6% to 0.3%, which has perhaps led to the growing support that has been seen in this period of time – questions aimed particularly at the betting and gambling sector had shown that respondents felt online platforms were conducted in a fair manor and remained trustworthy, an increase in 4% positivity rates from surveys issued last year.

Similar surveys also saw responses for similar questions change too – those who thought gambling was a harmful activity and those who believed gambling should be discouraged saw a marked drop of around 4-5% for both questions, with this change coming as rates of play have statistically stayed the same or seen an improvement in this same period of time – with different areas of online gambling being included in this report too, it shows how influential and impactful the iGaming industry has become and how big the audience has become despite the most recent bout of changes.

With new and emerging markets particularly in the US, operators will continue to have more data to pull from and this likely won’t be the last report of its kind that shows a switch to a positive perception of gambling – as changes are continued to be made in the UK market, this shifting perception may only continue to show too, and despite a number of restrictive measures being quite pronounced, continued support will only lead to more operators being prominent in the UK and seeing a large number of different gaming options and different gaming genres emerge in the market too.