The United Kingdom is one of the largest European markets for the gambling companies, it constitutes a total of 13.8 billion GBP in the Gross Gambling Yield (GGY) according to the UKGC findings. There are over 100,000 people employed in the offline and online gambling sector in the UK and around 8,500 betting shops across the country. Betting has always been a part of the British culture, but it now seems that the government will start taking a harder action on the industry.
What happens with an iGaming sector?
iGaming, which is another term to describe various online casinos, sport betting websites, poker rooms and so on, currently accounts for roughly 5 billion GBP in the GGY, and it currently growth 5 times bigger than the offline sector. The number of the operators is constantly increasing the the range of their offers expands quite quickly too. Just to see a magnitude of the industry, you may check out the number of the detailed reviews at topratedbettingsites.co.uk and see how many operators are now servicing the UK market.
One of the current ideas of the British government is to prohibit betting account top-ups via credit card for the UK residents. This will certainly have a great impact on the whole industry as the credit card deposits account for the largest part of cash flow. It is still unknown how this policy might impact such payment systems as Skrill, those are very popular for depositing at the online casinos and provide the users with the prepaid cards.
What about brick and mortar casinos?
While the online operators are growing very fast and are often based outside of the UK, fighting offline casinos and betting shops might be a much harder task. First of all, the industry creates many jobs and contributes substantially in the tax and licensing revenues. Still, there are some changes coming.
The government plans to dramatically reduce the maximum size of the bet at the fixed-odds betting terminals. It is projected that the largest possible bet will become 2 GBP, and it currently is set to 100 GBP. This action is expected to only hit the horse betting sector.
How does the stock market react?
When the negative news are to be expect, the markets are the first ones to react. Right after the announcements have been made, the stock of Ladbrokes went down from 182 GBP per share to 168 GBP. William Hill’s stock went down from 336 GBP to 306 GBP per share.