Report library, 2025

The Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) published this modelling study, prepared for it by EY, in October 2025 to support its submission to HM Treasury before the Autumn 2025 Budget. It estimates how several excise duty scenarios would change duty receipts, economic output (gross value added, GVA), jobs and black-market stakes, with all results shown for 2026 against a baseline. EY assumes duty rises are passed on to customers in full.

• As a starting point, EY puts the contribution of BGC members and their supply chains at £6.8bn of UK GVA in 2023, supporting 109,000 full-time-equivalent jobs.
• Aligning general betting duty and remote gaming duty at 21% would, in the central case, raise excise revenue by £250m and cut GVA by £240m.
• Under the IPPR proposal (25% betting duty, 50% remote gaming and machine games duty), EY estimates black-market stakes rising by £6.0bn to £8.4bn and GVA falling by £2.5bn to £3.1bn, depending on the elasticity assumed.
• EY says the SMF and IPPR proposals appear to rest on static costings that assume no change in consumer behaviour, whereas its own model allows for a behavioural response.

The study was commissioned by an industry body, and EY calls its black-market estimates illustrative only.

This open-access scoping review, published on 8 October 2025, gathers research on why online gambling is hard to regulate and whether public health legal measures reduce online gambling harm. The authors searched scientific and legal sources against set inclusion criteria and wrote a narrative synthesis of the 27 sources they included.

• Most of the harm-reduction research reviewed targets individual behaviour rather than the system as a whole.
• Where studies do take a system-wide view, they tend to focus on unlicensed gambling and blocking, measures the authors say need a thorough delivery strategy to work.
• There is little evidence on how interventions affect particular groups within the population.
• The authors conclude that weak legal and regulatory frameworks have helped online gambling harm spread, though the studies explain that weakness in different ways.

The European Gaming and Betting Association (EGBA) published its fifth annual sustainability report on 9 July 2025. It aggregates data supplied by its operator members on their online business in the EU and UK for calendar year 2024, and the association notes that the report has not been externally audited.

• Members paid €3.8bn in taxes in 2024, a figure that counts corporate and gaming taxes together.
• They sent 100 million messages promoting safer play, 48% more than a year earlier.
• 69% of customers, or 26.7 million players, used safety tools; half of them did so voluntarily.
• EGBA reports that personalised messages had a positive effect on 42-46% of customers showing high-risk behaviour.
• Members invested €735m in European sport, with streaming rights the largest share, and contributed €148.9m to research, education and treatment services.

This open-access journal article, published on 13 June 2025, measures how Spain's Royal Decree 958/2020, which limits the marketing of gambling products, affected online play and operator marketing spend. The authors applied seasonal ARIMA time-series models to data from Spain's gambling regulator, the Directorate General for Regulation of Gambling.

• The decree's entry into force, applied between November 2020 and August 2021, was followed by a lasting fall in new accounts, estimated at 263,000, and in total money bet, estimated at €216m.
• Spending on advertising fell by an estimated €20m, on bonuses by €2.6m and on sponsorship by €5.3m.
• The effect on active accounts, which the authors treat as regular gamblers, was slight.

The authors suggest their study can serve as a model for countries that have not yet regulated gambling advertising.

iGaming Ontario (iGO) released its market figures for fiscal year 2024-25 on 24 April 2025, covering 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025, the third full year of the province's regulated online market. The figures cover iGO operators whose gaming websites traded in the period and exclude OLG's own online offering and pari-mutuel horse racing.

• Total wagers were C$82.7bn, which iGO reports as a 31% increase on 2023-24.
• Total gaming revenue reached C$3.2bn, a 32% rise on the agency's figures.
• Casino games produced C$2.4bn of gaming revenue and betting C$724m.
• A third annual Ipsos study, commissioned by iGO and the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO), found that 83.7% of Ontarians continue to play on regulated sites.

All of the figures are unaudited and may be adjusted.

The European Gaming and Betting Association (EGBA) published this market data report on 24 March 2025, with figures from H2 Gambling Capital covering the 27 EU member states and the UK. Its 2024 numbers are provisional and may be revised, and its online figures include both licensed and grey-market activity.

• Provisional data put 2024 gross gaming revenue (GGR) at €123.4bn: €75.5bn land-based and €47.9bn online.
• Online was expected to account for 39% of the total in 2024, up slightly from 37% in 2023.
• Online casino was the largest online product at €21.5bn, ahead of sports and events betting at €13.7bn.
• Mobile devices were expected to generate 58% of online revenue in 2024.
• The online share of each national market in 2023 ranged from 68.3% in Sweden down to 14.2% in Spain.

The report also projects the market to 2029, assuming no significant disruptions, and labels such figures as estimates rather than final values.

Published on 13 February 2025 as an open-access journal article, this policy review compares the legal rules on pre-commitment and limit-setting for online gambling in 30 European countries: the 27 EU member states, Great Britain, Norway and Switzerland. The authors then looked more closely at Finland, Norway and Germany, which run system-level pre-commitment.

• Some form of limit-setting exists in 27 of the 30 countries, but implementation differs.
• Deposit limits feature in 18 countries, loss limits in 15 and wagering limits in 14; most countries offer more than one type.
• Time-based limits are available in ten countries, and 11 make at least some limits mandatory; elsewhere operators must offer limits as an option.
• Few countries set statutory caps on limits, or lower limits for young adults.
• Germany is the only country whose system-level scheme spans several licensed operators.

This open-access journal article, published on 3 January 2025, tests whether lower tax rates help European countries move online gambling onto licensed sites. It uses two cross-sections (2018 and 2021) for 29 European countries, combining estimated channelling rates with tax and blocking data in a regression analysis.

• Average channelling for online betting rose from 42.2% in 2015 to 64.9% in 2021; for online casino it rose from 24.2% to 55.1% over the same period.
• Offshore play lost share mainly because the licensed market grew faster: in real terms the offshore segment still grew, by 4% in betting and 37% in casino.
• Average rates for products taxed on GGR went from 18% to 21.5% by 2021, while rates diverged more between countries.
• The regression found no evidence that higher tax rates go with lower channelling, contrary to earlier industry-funded reports.

The channelling rates rest on estimates from H2 Gambling Capital, a UK-based market intelligence company; its offshore figures come from its own model.