UK Problem Gambling Rate Falls to 2.4%, But the Numbers Hiding in Plain Sight Tell a Different Story

Key Points

• The PGSI 8+ problem gambling rate decreased from 2.7% in 2024 to 2.4% in 2025 using survey results from 20,775 adults in Great Britain.
• Older men, aged 55 years and older, were the only group to have a statistically significant increase in their non-lottery gambling behaviour.
• The Betting and Gaming Council reiterates the message that GSGB samples heavily gamblers, and its results are many times higher than those of NHS Health Surveys (0.7%).

A Third Year of Data, and Things Get Complicated

News reports open with the number 2.4 per cent. British adults reached a score of eight or higher on the Problem Gambling Severity Index during 2025 at this level. Researchers gathered the information through the third annual Gambling Survey for Great Britain. The Gambling Commission carried out the work and published the results on 16 July 2026. Participation fell below the 2.7 per cent recorded in 2024. That earlier year marked the first occasion when officials ran the full survey across the country.

The survey was done through the push-to-web technique and was performed by the National Centre for Social Research and the University of Glasgow. In total, the survey included 20,775 British adults, one thousand more than in the previous year, with the fieldwork period from January 2025 until January 2026. This 2.4% corresponds to one and a half million people, and it is the first fall of the PGSI 8+ rate in just three years of the survey’s history.

Tim Miller, the Commission’s executive director for research and policy, who is due to leave the regulator in September 2026 after a decade in the role, said: “Three years of GSGB provides a richer, more timely picture of the trend in gambling in Great Britain than has previously been available. It helps us understand not only who gambles and the products they use, but also why people gamble, the range of experiences they have, and the consequences gambling can have in people’s lives.”

Participation Holds Steady, But Not Evenly

Headline participation figures changed very little. As per the findings released by the Commission, 47% of the adults claimed that they gambled within the last four weeks, a decrease from 48% in the previous survey. Excluding those that only played the lottery, the figure reduces to 27% a figure that remains roughly proportional through the three surveys.

However, there is more change happening behind the scenes. Specifically, Helen Bryce, Chief Statistician of the Commission, noted that there was great significance in paying attention to one group. Non-lottery gambling by male adults aged above 55 increased from 27 per cent to 32 per cent between 2023 and 2025 within a span of 12 months. The same pattern was witnessed in the data for four weeks, where the percentages increased from 18 per cent to 22 per cent. No other gender or age group saw any statistical significance increase in this period. In fact, the opposite happened for men between 18 and 34, whereby the participation rate fell from 54% to 51%.

The Commission has said explicitly that it does not yet know what is driving the older male trend, and has called for further analysis into which specific products this group is turning to. That admission of uncertainty is itself notable for a regulator publishing an official statistical release.

Why People Gamble, According to Those Who Do It

For the first time, the GSGB’s headline findings included a breakdown of the motivations gamblers gave for participating. Among all survey respondents who had gambled, 84% cited the chance of winning a large sum of money. Fun accounted for 69% of responses, while 57% described making money as a reason, and 53% pointed to the excitement of the activity itself.

Alongside those motivations, 78% of gamblers reported a positive or neutral view of their own gambling. That is a figure the industry has been quick to highlight, and one that sits awkwardly alongside the regulatory pressure that has intensified since the current survey programme began. Whether the Commission’s forthcoming policy decisions will reflect the weight of that majority view remains an open question.

The Consequences That Don’t Make the Headline

There were also some data points that went unheard when compared to the PGSI score. Among the respondents who have gambled in the previous 12 months, 2.7% experienced at least one severe consequence from their gambling behaviour. The most common of these was relationship problems, which affected 1.7%. An additional 6.4% reduced their expenses on basic needs, and 5.9% lied to their families on occasion.

Changes are also happening in the area of affected others. A little more than two-fifths of all respondents, or 43.2%, stated that somebody close to them gambled, regardless of how often they did so. In the mentioned category, 3.3% received some sort of help or treatment. Among individuals aged 35 to 54 years, the proportion that sought assistance with regard to their gambling increased from 2.4% in 2023 to 3.8% in 2025. The Commission views this as a result of more individuals getting access to services, rather than more individuals needing assistance.

Conversely, the trend was observed among women aged 55 years and above, whose gambling problem was caused by other individuals’ gambling behaviours. The rate at which such women sought help fell by over half, from 2.9% in 2023 to 1.2% in 2025. This was recognised as a treatment gap by the Commission’s own report.

The Methodology Argument That Will Not Settle

The 2.4% figure does not exist in a vacuum. The NHS Health Survey for England continues to place the problem gambling rate at 0.7%, a figure the Betting and Gaming Council has repeatedly used to argue that the GSGB substantially oversamples gamblers and therefore inflates both participation and harm figures.

A BGC spokesperson said: “There remain well-evidenced concerns that the Gambling Survey for Great Britain substantially oversamples gamblers and therefore produces inflated participation and harm levels. The latest NHS Health Survey for England estimates that 0.7 per cent of adults are problem gamblers, one of the lowest rates internationally, demonstrating that Britain’s robust regulatory framework is working. It is vital that policy remains proportionate, based on the most robust evidence available, while ensuring those who need support can access it quickly and effectively.”

The Commission’s position is that direct comparisons between the GSGB and surveys using different methodologies are not appropriate. Its guidance is explicit that the correct comparison is between successive GSGB waves, which now offer three consistent years of data. That framing is methodologically defensible; whether it will satisfy critics is a separate matter.

Researcher Dan Waugh, a partner at Regulus Partners, has published specific challenges to the survey’s accuracy, pointing to discrepancies between its estimates and operator-reported customer figures. His work has found the GSGB estimates for betting exchange users to be several times higher than Betfair’s own active customer numbers. The Commission has maintained that its methodology underwent independent review and pilot testing before the first edition was published.

Industry Alarm Over the Black Market

Separate from the survey results themselves, the BGC raised a concern that has been building for some time. Research by H2 Gambling Capital, cited by the council, concluded that the remote gaming duty increase announced in last year’s budget, combined with lower regulated-market returns to players, is expected to push more customers towards unlicensed operators. The forecast suggests the illegal market’s share of online betting could more than double, reaching 22% by 2031 from 10% in 2025, with turnover in the illegal market also more than doubling to £36 billion.

BGC chief executive Grainne Hurst said: “The only winners from these tax hikes will be criminal operators based overseas. Britain will lose jobs, investment and tax revenue, while consumers are pushed towards operators offering none of the protections found in the regulated market.”

The GSGB itself does not include any data on illegal operator use within Great Britain, a gap the BGC has highlighted as a significant limitation when the survey is used to inform regulatory decisions.

Expert Analysis

Three years of consistent data now give the GSGB something it has always lacked: a baseline worth arguing over. The 2.4% PGSI rate is lower than it was twelve months ago, and that is a fact the Commission is entitled to report. What the data also contains, if you read past the summary, is a regulator that has identified an unexplained rise in gambling among older men, a falling help-seeking rate among older women affected by someone else’s gambling, and a methodology debate that shows no sign of resolution. The Commission has commissioned two further reports examining harm susceptibility at lower PGSI levels and the value of single-metric harm indicators, which suggests it is already aware that PGSI 8+ is not sufficient as a lone measure. With Tim Miller departing in September, and the affordability check policy still in development, the question of how this data gets used will be answered by whoever sits in that chair next.