Yesterday, the Gambling Commission updated its data regarding the impact of COVID-19 on gambling behavior, reflecting the lockdown in April and May.

The data was taken from YouGov’s Covid-19 tracker, which covers a representative sample of circa 2,000 adults in Great Britain each week, and from submissions of the biggest operators, covering approximately 80% of the entire online gambling market.

A few of the interesting findings:

The lockdown period does not appear to have attracted many new consumers to gambling. According to YouGov research from 20-21 May[6], only 0.4% of all adults surveyed stated that they had started gambling for the first time during the last four weeks. This compares with 2.1% of adults who had stopped gambling altogether during this period. Neither of these figures were significantly different from the rates recorded in the early lockdown period.

Operator data on overall active player accounts[8] indicates a further 1.2% decrease between April and May 2020, with the number of active players down across each of the verticals, excluding real event betting, where the number increased by 13% between April and May. This increase in the number of active players for real event betting corresponds to the return of the Bundesliga from 16 May.
We have also collected data during May on whether play is done in sessions which only feature one vertical (‘single activity’ sessions) or multiple (‘multiple activity’ sessions). Our analysis shows that a 88% of sessions are single activity sessions, which indicates that consumers do not tend to engage in multiple activities within a single session, but are more likely to engage in multiple activities across the month (within separate, individual sessions).

The lockdown period has also seen changes in repertoire for some – the YouGov research shows that around three in ten (31%) past-four-week gamblers say they have tried one or more gambling activities for the first time during lockdown[10]. This figure rises to almost half (48%) of engaged gamblers[11], with this group being most likely to try online bingo (13%), betting on virtual races or sports (12%), National Lottery online instant wins (11%) and online slots (11%). Among all past-four-week gamblers, the main new activity is National Lottery draw-based games, with 18% claiming to have played National Lottery draws for the first time in the last four weeks.
Read the complete report here: https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.u...July-2020.aspx