Great Britain Gambling GGY Increases 4% to £17.5 Billion for 2025/26

The British gambling industry grew by 4.4% in the 2025/26 financial year, with gross gambling yield (GGY) climbing to £17.5 billion, in the last reporting period before the introduction of increased online taxes.

The latest industry statistics released by regulator the Gambling Commission showed the customer-facing gambling industry in Great Britain, excluding all reported lotteries, generated GGY of £13.2 billion in the period, up 4.7%.

The increase was driven by an upturn for the remote casino, betting and bingo sector, where GGY rose 6.9% to £8.3 billion.

Strong year for online casino

Casino was the most lucrative vertical in the remote sector, with GGY going up from £4.96 billion to £5.69 billion. However, there was an overall decrease in the number of new account registrations with remote operators, with the total going down 3% to 32.4 million.

GGY for the land-based sector came in at a more modest 1.1% increase to £4.9 billion, which was partially driven by a 4.3% improvement in GGY for gaming machines, to £5.7 billion; a vast majority of this was from online slot games at £4.8 billion.

National Lottery sales totalled £7.9 billion, up by 0.9%; Allwyn UK, which operates the National Lottery, announced in January it would be carrying out a major upgrade to the lottery’s digital platforms, with the update allowing Allwyn to offer the largest ever range of National Lottery games.

Online tax to bite

The 2026/27 period will be the first where the results are impacted by the new tax system. From April 2026, remote gaming duty, paid on online casino bets, was raised from 21% of GGY to 40%.

In addition, general betting duty, paid on online sports bets, will go up from 15% of GGY to 25% in April 2027; bets on horseracing will be exempt from this.

In 2025/26, the total number of betting shops in Great Britain dropped 3.6% to 5,617. The number is set to decrease further in the current financial year, with several operators announcing shop closures, in part as a result of the tax increases. Earlier this month, Flutter Entertainment confirmed up to 100 of its Paddy Power shops are “under review”.

Retail cuts have also been announced by William Hill owner Evoke, which confirmed in April it would be closing 270 of its shops, representing about 15% of its retail estate. Meanwhile, Betfred announced in July plans to close 132 of its shops and reduce its workforce by more than 600 employees.

Possible MGD increase too

Future results could also be impacted by an increase in machine games duty (MGD). In June, cross-party think tank the Social Markets Foundation called for MGD on Category B machines in the UK to be raised to 40% of net takings, which would be double the current rate of 20% of revenue generated on gaming machines in both casinos and bingo halls.

Reports earlier this month suggested UK Chancellor John Healey is giving serious consideration to raising MGD in the Autumn Budget, which will be announced on Wednesday, 28 October.

This week, Stella David, CEO of Ladbrokes and Coral owner Entain, and Richard Harris, CEO of Grosvenor Casinos and Mecca Bingo owner Rank Group, both warned of job losses if the rate is raised to 40%.