Online Bingo Boost

The Gambling Commission has published the latest figures showing the number of people in the UK who participate in remote gambling, which includes participating in online games such as bingo. The report reveals that online bingo has enjoyed a boost in popularity over the last year. The main findings were as follows:

For the year to March 2007, 8.4% of the individuals surveyed (numbering 8,000) confirmed that they had participated in one or more forms of online gambling in the previous month. This is a 0.5% increase on the 7.9% of respondents saying the same thing the year before.

Overall, more males participate in remote gambling than females. The exact figures were 10.3% of male respondents participating in remote gambling compared with 5.5% of female respondents.

5.5% of respondents reported that they had played the National Lottery remotely at some point during the previous month - a figure that is up 0.2% on last year's 5.3%.

The most popular method of remote gambling was via a computer (either a desktop or laptop device) or handheld device, and 5.7% used one of these methods. 2.5% of respondents used a mobile phone to gamble remotely (up from 2.2% the previous year) and 1.8% used their interactive TV facility (up from 1.7%).

The number of respondents saying that they had played bingo remotely was 0.9%, up 0.2% from 0.7% the previous year. This is more than the number of people playing the football pools (0.8%) or keno and virtual sports games (0.5%) remotely.

These latest figures show that almost all forms of remote gambling are increasing, but it is particularly pleasing to see that bingo has swelled in popularity over the last twelve months. The jump from 0.7% to 0.9% might not look like a great increase, but it is actually a growth of more than 28%.

It will very interesting to see what this figure is next year following the smoking ban in traditional clubs, as many commentators are anticipating something of an exodus to online bingo rooms over the next six months or so.

22nd January 2008