Online gambling is a large part of Britain’s digital economy, and the official figures are the best place to start. The yardstick is gross gambling yield (GGY): the money operators keep after paying out winnings and before costs and tax. For remote casino, betting and bingo, the Gambling Commission recorded £6.9bn in GGY from Great Britain customers in 2023/24. Put simply, that is what players lost to licensed operators in one year. It is not profit, and it says nothing yet about what the sector gives back or what it costs.
Some overseas operators sit outside the Gambling Commission’s jurisdiction. They don’t report to it, and GB licence protections don’t apply to them, but they still compete for online players with promotions, and Rocketplay casino no deposit bonus codes are one version of that pitch. Who regulates the operator decides which rules protect the player, so check that first.
What the Official Figures Show
The £6.9bn splits into three products, and one of them dominates.
- Online casino games: £4.4bn, of which slots made £3.6bn
- Betting: £2.4bn, led by football at £1.1bn and horse racing at £771.1m
- Bingo: £167.1m
- Participation: 38% of adults in Great Britain gambled online in the four weeks before they were surveyed in 2024, or 16% once lottery-only players are left out
Slots are the engine. They bring in more than half of all remote revenue, and they are the product the Treasury has just taxed hardest.
Jobs: Real, but Industry-Reported
The best available employment numbers come from the industry itself. An EY report for the Betting and Gaming Council found that member firms employed about 55,000 people in 2023, roughly 45,000 full-time equivalent roles. Add suppliers and the spending of staff, and the same report puts jobs supported at 109,000 full-time equivalents.
Read those figures with care. The BGC commissioned the report. It covers its members only and leaves out Northern Ireland. “Supported” jobs are modelled, not counted. The total also includes betting shops and casinos, so it doesn’t measure online employment on its own. EY found the supply chain spending concentrated in service sectors such as marketing.
Advertising: A Big Bill With Fuzzy Edges
WARC estimated that UK gambling firms spent more than £2bn on advertising in 2024, according to coverage in The Guardian. The figure includes print and digital promotion plus affiliate programmes, where third parties are paid to send players to operators. Media industry sources quoted in the coverage said the true total is probably hundreds of millions higher, because digital spend is hard to track.
That money lands with broadcasters, publishers, agencies and affiliates, so it counts as economic activity. Bonuses sit inside the same budget, because they are how operators buy customers. Since 19 January 2026, GB-licensed casinos have had to cap wagering requirements on bonus funds at 10 times. That rule covers GB licence holders only.
Tax: Now a Policy Tool
The Office for Budget Responsibility expects betting and gaming duties to raise about £4bn in 2025–26, around 0.3% of all tax receipts.
The Budget in November 2025 changed the rates. Remote gaming duty, which covers online slots and casino games, went from 21% to 40% on 1 April 2026. A new 25% rate on remote general bets follows on 1 April 2027, with UK horse racing excluded. Bingo duty was abolished from April 2026. The government expects the package to raise over £1bn a year, and it said the biggest increase targets online casino products because it sees them as more harmful.
So the product that earns the most is also the one now taxed the hardest.
Technology: Mostly Compliance Work
No official source says how much the sector spends on technology or how many tech jobs it supports, so treat any such figure with suspicion. What is documented is the compliance work that GB licensing forces onto operators. They have to verify age and identity, connect to the GAMSTOP self-exclusion scheme (mandatory since 31 March 2020) and refuse credit cards, which have been banned for gambling since April 2020. That creates real engineering and vendor work. It is a cost of holding a licence, though, not a measure of innovation.
The Cost Side: Gambling Harms
The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities has put a price on harm. Its 2023 update estimates the annual cost of gambling-related harm in England at £1.05bn–£1.77bn, in 2021–22 prices. About £413m of that is direct cost to government: criminal justice £167.3m, health £119.5m, welfare £77.0m and homelessness £49.0m. The rest is intangible, mainly suicide and the loss of quality of life from depression. The same work estimates that about 1.76 million people in England gamble at levels linked to some harm, and around 168,000 of them are problem gamblers.
The authors call their figures underestimates. Many harms, including those to family members, could not be costed, and the numbers show association rather than proven causation.
Survey data points the same way. The Gambling Survey for Great Britain found that 2.7% of adults are problem gamblers and another 3.1% are at moderate risk. Harm is not spread evenly either. Public Health England’s 2021 review found it concentrated in more deprived areas, and men were more than four times as likely as women to gamble at elevated risk.
Set these beside the revenue figure with one caveat. Revenue covers Great Britain and the cost estimate covers England only, so one can’t simply be netted off against the other. Both still belong in any assessment of the sector.
Conclusion
Online gambling is a large, heavily regulated and increasingly taxed part of Britain’s digital economy. Licensed operators made £6.9bn in 2023/24, the industry reports tens of thousands of jobs, advertising runs past £2bn a year, and online casino products now carry a 40% duty. The costs fall on health services, the justice system, benefits and families.
For anyone weighing an offer, the first step is to check the operator’s licence on the Gambling Commission’s public register. If it isn’t there, the GB rules above don’t apply.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It does not constitute legal, financial, or gambling advice. Online gambling carries risks, and statistically players stand a higher chance of losing their stake. You should only gamble what you can afford to lose, and participate if you are over the legal age in your jurisdiction. Always gamble responsibly and within your means. If you or someone you know is experiencing problems with gambling, seek help from a professional support service such as GamCare or BeGambleAware.