Great Britain’s customer-facing gambling industry generated £17.5bn in gross gambling yield during the financial year from April 2025 to March 2026, an increase of 4.4% year on year. The Gambling Commission’s full annual Industry Statistics release shows that digital products continued to expand faster than the land-based market.
Remote casino, betting and bingo GGY increased 6.9% to £8.3bn, while land-based gambling produced £4.9bn after growing 1.1%.
Total customer-facing GGY reached £17.5bn after increasing 4.4% from the previous financial year.
GGY excluding the National Lottery and society lotteries rose 4.7% to £13.2bn.
Remote casino, betting and bingo generated £8.3bn and expanded faster than land-based gambling.
Online casino games accounted for £5.7bn of remote GGY, including £4.8bn generated by slots.
Licensed gambling premises declined 2% to 8,081, while betting shops fell 3.6% to 5,617.
The results cover Great Britain rather than the whole United Kingdom and include reported lotteries.
The Commission’s official annual statistics show how concentrated digital revenue has become. Online casino games generated £5.7bn, representing more than two-thirds of combined remote casino, betting and bingo GGY. Slots contributed approximately £4.8bn of the online casino total.
Remote betting delivered £2.4bn, led by £1.2bn from football and £769.3m from horse racing. Remote bingo was considerably smaller at £147.8m. The breakdown indicates that the remote sector’s expansion was driven primarily by casino rather than uniform growth across every online product.
In the Commission’s accompanying analysis, Data Analytics Manager Jason Davies said:
This rise has been largely driven by GGY generated from the remote casino sector.
Remote casino GGY increased by £736m to £5.7bn during the year. For operators, suppliers, and investors, the increase highlights the commercial importance of digital casino portfolios, particularly slot content, platform capacity, and player-protection systems capable of supporting higher activity.
The annual picture builds on earlier evidence that remote gambling was becoming the market’s principal revenue channel. During the second quarter of the same financial year, remote casino, betting, and bingo had already generated £2bn in GGY, representing around two-thirds of non-lottery gambling yield.
The physical market remained sizeable but expanded much more slowly. Land-based casinos, betting, bingo, and arcades generated £4.9bn, a year-on-year increase of 1.1%. This performance contrasts with the 6.9% increase across remote channels.
Non-remote betting GGY declined 3.3% to £2.4bn. The number of betting shops fell by 208 to 5,617, extending the decline in betting premises for a 12th consecutive reporting period. Across the wider market, licensed premises decreased to 8,081.
Performance varied between other retail segments. Non-remote casino GGY edged up 0.4% to £933.9m, while bingo increased 8.2% to £703.8m. Arcades produced £800.1m after expanding 10.7%, demonstrating that the shift towards digital gambling does not translate into contraction across every physical vertical.
Operators managing both online and retail businesses face a market in which digital casino revenue is growing rapidly while the betting-shop estate continues to shrink.
The new publication covers the complete April 2025 to March 2026 financial year and is materially different from a quarterly update. Previous UKGC market insights up to March 2026 tracked active accounts, slot sessions and betting activity using a separate operator dataset.
The Commission has warned that the former market-impact dataset should not be compared directly with the annual Industry Statistics series. Differences in participating operators, free-bet treatment and reporting methodology can produce misleading comparisons. The annual report is based on regulatory returns from licensed operators and provides the more comprehensive measure of market size.
The number of operators in the market declined 1.1% to 2,154, although the number of licensed gambling activities increased to 3,097. New remote account registrations also fell 3% to 32.4 million, showing that higher GGY did not depend on growth across every participation indicator.
The reporting period ended immediately before the higher remote gaming duty took effect in April 2026. The rate increased from 21% to 40%, creating a substantially different cost environment for online casino businesses after the year covered by the statistics.
The latest GGY figures therefore provide a pre-tax-change baseline rather than evidence of how the sector has performed under the new rate. The next annual report, covering April 2026 to March 2027, will offer the first complete view of market performance after the increase.
For B2B suppliers, operators and investors, the central question is whether remote casino growth can continue while higher taxation, compliance costs and player-protection requirements place additional pressure on margins. The annual data confirms digital dominance, but the commercial conditions surrounding that growth have already materially changed.
