Recently two reports on gambling have been released. The first is by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) and the second by the American Gaming Association (AGA).
The UKGC report is based on a study of 8000 UK adults conducted by ICM Research. The study covers a one-year period from April 2008 to March 2009. Internet gambling has continued to show an increase, though the quantum of increase is less than before. For the year ended March 2006 the increase was 7.2% over the previous year. For the year ended March 2007 the increase was 8.8%. For the year ended March 2008 the increase was 9.7%. Now the increase for the year ended March 2009 is 9.9%. This seems to indicate that the rate of increase is tapering off at about 10% per year. The report also reveals that most of this increase is due to increase in online wagering on the National Lottery. The same was the case reported in earlier years. The report says that of those who gambled on the Internet in the year under consideration, 43.5% gambled exclusively on the online lottery. The increase in other online gamblers, whether on the Internet, interactive television or mobile, remained constant at 5.6%. The corresponding figures for the years ended 2006 and 2007 were 5.1% and 5.2% respectively.
The report also published a profile of the remote gamblers. 8.2% of the respondents preferred the Internet as the medium. 2.8% of the respondents preferred Mobile gambling. 2.1% of the respondents were in favor of interactive television. The corresponding figures for the previous year were 7.8%, 2.9% and 2.1% respectively. Hence it could be seen that Internet gambling has been on the increase whereas the other two forms have shown no change. Another interesting fact revealed was that remote gamblers were predominantly male in the 18 to 44 year age group.
The AGA report concerns land gambling operations based on a state-by-state aggregation of data. In the calendar year 2007 casinos had reported the highest ever revenue increases of 5.3%. In the calendar year 2008 the casino revenues fell 4.7%, which was the first annual decline since 1999. In actual terms the gambling revenues fell by $1.6 billion to $32.5 billion. The state-by-state analysis is very interesting. The largest declines were in the States of Colorado and Illinois. The decline was not caused by a financial crunch but by a statewide ban on smoking. Gambling revenues jumped almost 50% to $1.6 billion in Pennsylvania due to the addition of a racetrack casino. This drew gamblers from the neighboring state of New Jersey.
Some other interesting facts were revealed in the AGA report. Casino employment was down 0.1% to 357,314; tax revenues totaled $5.7 billion, down $0.1 billion from the previous year; the number of casinos and card parlors was 1,606 and 2% of adult Americans gamble online.
