The Gambling Commission has confirmed that the first annual report of its Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB) will be published later this month.
The July 25 report will offer more detail on data that already been collected in two waves, covering the period from July 2023 to February 2024.
The first wave of data from July to November 2023 was published by the UK regulator at the end of February, with the second wave, from November 2023 to February, was finalised in June.
While the first annual report is based on 10,000 responses and two waves of data, the UKGC’s head of statistics, Helen Bryce, said future annual reports will be based on four waves of data collected across the calendar year, totalling 20,000 responses.
“By combining responses across multiple waves, we’ll be able to go into more detail about how responses vary across different population sub-groups, and [we] will also publish more data in the annual report about the consequences of gambling,” Bryce said in a blog post.
The GSGB is the Gambling Commission’s latest attempt at streamlining data on the UK gambling industry. It aims to give a better picture of the market’s make-up and the prevalence of potential problem gambling.
The second wave of statistics asked 5,003 people who had gambled in the past 12 months to rate how they felt about their gambling experience.
Forty-one per cent rated it positively, but 22 per cent “expressed negative feelings towards it,” Bryce noted.
“Over one third (37 per cent) said they neither loved nor hated their last gambling experience.”
The GSGB survey asks people about the gambling activities they have participated in and how they have taken part.
“We’ve also published data on why people gamble, which shows that most people take part for fun or for the chance to win money,” Bryce said.