UK Remote Gambling on the Rise
For some reason it is usually seen as a bad thing when a particular region’s
online casino usage goes up in numbers. The United Kingdom recently released the
statistics on their citizens’ use of online casinos. The Gambling Commission
released the numbers based on data collected from December 2001 until September
2008. The data was collected through various surveys conducted through out the
year by ICM Research. The criteria of the survey was to fill out several
questions on the topic of remote gambling, a.k.a. mobile, internet and
interactive television gambling. The published data was based on the interviews
of 8,000 interviews.
Out of those 8,000 adults that were surveyed for the information published the
group that conducted the study came to several conclusions. The results were
quite interesting, 9.3 percent of all 8,000 adults that were interviewed said
that they had participated in online casinos or any other type of remote
gambling. This may not seem like a large number, but considering that the number
of people that participated in online casino play in 2007 was 8.8 and in 2006 it
was 7.2 percent, it is a pretty significant jump in users. You could, however,
very well look at it the other way and say that 90.5 percent of the sample
population polled did not participate in any form of online casino or any other
type of remote gambling.
Another interesting fact that the study found is that the people who were most
likely to gable at an online casino were more likely male and between the ages
of 18 and 44 years old. There is a slight are where the data may be skewed to
the favor of remote gambling. The National Lottery now allows big money hopefuls
to play their numbers from the convenience of their own homes rather than having
to go all the way to the grocery store. Without the National Lottery numbers the
actual percentage of people polled that play at online casinos or any other form
of remote gambling decreases to a low 5.4 percent.
Readers can access the survey data here:
http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/Client/mediadetail.asp?mediaid=151