Online Slots Revenue Still Rising in UK Despite Maximum Stake Limits

Gross gambling yield (GGY) generated by the biggest operators in Great Britain went up 7% year-on-year for Q4 of the 2025/26 financial year to £1.77 billion, primarily driven by an increase in online slot revenue.

The data published by British regulator the Gambling Commission covers the largest online operators and betting premises in the country. This dataset, which covered January to March 2026, marked the last in a dataset published since 2020, showing how gambling behaviour has changed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The overall number of total bets and/or spins in the quarter increased 7% year-on-year to 26.8 billion.

Slots GGY up despite stake limits

Online slots GGY increased 12% to £773 million, with the number of spins rising 7% to 25.1 billion. The number of spins per session decreased from 136 to 124, and GGY per session went down from £4.01 to £3.82 in the equivalent timeframe.

This was the fourth quarter of available data since the maximum stake for online slot games was introduced, meaning a full year’s worth of data is now available to compare players’ activity under the current regulations with the previous ones.

On April 9, 2025, a £5 limit on online slot stakes for all adults in the UK went live, following recommendations by the government’s 2023 Gambling White Paper. On May 21, 2025, a £2 limit for adults aged between 18 and 24 went live. However, when a player over 25 makes a bet on an online slot game, further staking opportunities could be offered within the same game cycle up to the value of £3.

In Q4 2025/26, the number of online slots sessions lasting longer than an hour went down 12% to 8.9 million. The number of total sessions increased by 18% in the equivalent time period to 202 million. About 4.4% of all sessions lasted in excess of one hour during the quarter, compared to 5.9% the previous year. The average session length decreased by two minutes to 15 minutes.

Overall, the data indicates the stake limits have not led to a reduction in revenue being generated from online slots by operators, albeit the data does not cover the entire market and some operators may have implemented the stake limits prior to the official launch date. The volume of players appears to be outweighing the lower spend and shorter session time per player.

Offline betting down

With regards to offline betting, GGY went down by 5% to £527 million, while the number of total bets and spins decreased by 1% to 3.1 billion. The number of bets placed over the counter went down 3% to 125 million, while GGY descended 18% to £125 million.

Plans moving forward

A blog posted by the Commission’s Senior Manager for Market and Regulatory Insight Rab Grewal read:

“As we draw this Market Impact dataset to a close, we would like to thank all the operators who have contributed over the years. Their commitment, during an initially challenging time was invaluable in assessing risk. Our final reporting on this dataset will be our May publication (containing data from January to March 2026).

“Looking ahead, we will be expanding the Regular Feed of Operator Core Data (ROCD) project which collects data from operators on customers’ gambling behaviour. We see this as an important part of our approach to meeting the Government’s expectations for improving the use of data and analytics to deliver more effective regulation.”