UK Online Casino Yield Hits £5.7bn, Now Biggest Sector

Online casino games generated a record £5.7bn in gross gambling yield in Great Britain between April 2025 and March 2026, according to annual figures the Gambling Commission published on September 17. That makes remote casino the biggest single sector in a market worth £17.5bn, up 4.4% on the year before.

Gross gambling yield, or GGY, is what operators keep after paying out winnings, so it’s the cleanest measure of how casinos make money. By the Commission’s own data file, remote casinos now account for 32.7% of Great Britain’s total regulated gambling market, taking £5,699m of a £17,456m total. That’s 32.7% of everything the licensed British market earned, well ahead of the National Lottery at £3,465m.

Slots Carried the Whole Sector

Sector growth was almost entirely powered by online Slots, which expanded 15.5% year-over-year to reach £4.79 billion (up from £4.15bn in FY 2024–25). Online slots now generate 84.1% of total remote casino yield.

The overall remote casino turnover reached £126.5 billion, with slots accounting for £93.95 billion in total stakes.

Caps Didn’t Slow the Spin

The timing is what makes that Slots figure stand out. The year the numbers cover is the year stake limits arrived. The Commission’s guidance says the £5 cap for all adults went live on April 9, 2025, and the £2 cap for 18 to 24-year-olds followed on May 21, 2025.

Those limits cover online Slots only. They don’t apply to other casino games such as Roulette or Blackjack, which sit under the table games umbrella and aren’t capped. Even so, Slots yield grew faster than the online casino sector as a whole.

Betting Went the Other Way

In contrast to remote casino expansion, other major market segments experienced structural contraction over the 12-month period. Remote betting GGY fell to £2.45bn from £2,621m, a drop of about 6.6%. Football led it at £1.2bn, horse racing brought in £769.3m, while revenue from remote bingo slipped to £147.8m.

The high street kept shrinking too. Betting shops fell by 208 to 5,617, the 12th reporting period in a row that the number has gone down. The Commission counted 2,154 gambling operators in the market at the end of March, 1.1% fewer than a year before.

Fewer New Accounts, Less Money Parked

The online customer figures were softer than the revenue. New account registrations with remote operators fell 3.0% to 32.4 million, and there were 25.7 million active accounts at the end of the last quarter. Funds held in customer accounts dropped 13.9% to £886.6m.

Ben Haden, the Commission’s Director of Research and Policy, warned against reading too much into any single figure. “The market shifts that we see in industry data trends, and this year is no different, are complex and will be down to a mix of factors that need more than one source to unpick,” he said.

The Tax Bill Lands Next Year

This is not a new position for the online casino industry. On the Commission’s figures it first passed the National Lottery in the year to March 2021, when remote casino made £4,014m against the Lottery’s £3,532m, and it has stayed on top every year since. The £5.7bn is the biggest annual figure the data file shows for the sector.

The next set of numbers will look different for a simple reason. The government raised Remote Gaming Duty from 21% to 40% from April 1, 2026, and HM Revenue & Customs says the aim is to “disincentivise gambling companies from pushing consumers” toward the products it considers more harmful. The same HMRC paper says the gambling duty changes will raise over £1bn a year.

A 40% Rate on the Biggest Sector

Every pound in this report was earned before that rate applied. Operators now pay 40% duty on the sector that was already the biggest and fastest-growing in the country. Anyone who has felt their own play creep up can find limits and support on the responsible gambling page.

The April 2026 to March 2027 figures will be the first full year at the 40% rate.