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Gambling addictions – how to solve them with data

By Arthur Dean / March 15, 2021
Reading Time: 2 minutes

A small portion of players accountable for UK’s gambling gross revenues

Recent study, conducted by GambleAware, found out that there’s a tiny portion of the whole player base that accounts for most of the profits that operators generate in the UK. It’s been said that 5% of all the accounts registered in the UK, generates 70% of the income for these operators (actively operating under UK licenses). 

The research was originally compiled by professors Ian McHale & David Forrest (University of Liverpool). These professors studied more than 140 000 accounts between 2018-2019. 

There were some extremely interesting statistics that came from that study, and here’s the one’s we’re most excited about:

  • 85% of the accounts had losses less than 200£
  • 90% of the accounts had overall win / losses of 500 £
  • 1.2% of the accounts that were used to play casino games, lost +5000£ (0.7% for accounts that were used for sports betting)

Conclusion: The study only confirms what has been known for decades: Regardless of the business or genre, most of the time it’s the small percentage of customers that brings the biggest revenues. Unfortunately when the study is about igaming and casino games, it usually means that the small percentage described here, are mainly people who suffer from gambling addiction of some sort. 

Step to the right direction

Studies like these have a positive impact for the legislation and integrity of online games, as the more we know about the people who have gambling addictions, the more we can help them. GambleAware, and similar organisations have already been making a difference (for the better), and we have a feeling these will grow in numbers for the next 3 to 5 years. 

One of the key points taken from that study described exactly what kind of a use that data could be put to: It gives operators more tools to recognize possible harmful gambling behaviour, before disaster happens. Operators won’t probably decide to act on this by themselves, but it gives them no options when licence holders make these kind of data checks mandatory.