UK Online Gambling Profits and Need for Growth

September 26, 2009 | News Category: Online Casinos

0 Comments

The United Kingdom online gambling regulator, the UK Gambling Commission, has released figures for 2008, which show that online gambling generated more than $1.4 billion in revenue.

The entire gaming industry in the UK, including land-based gaming, generated more than $15 billion in profits. The National Lottery accounted for nearly a quarter of the bets placed and profits made. A total of $134 billion was placed in bets in the UK gaming industry in 2008. More than six million player accounts were active in the UK in 2008.

The UK has a number of different types of online gambling sites, such as online casinos, sports betting, bingo, and poker. There were 28 new online gambling sites licensed in 2008, which took the total of licensed UK gambling sites to 328. Most of the online gambling licensees are sports betting sites. The online gambling industry employs around 7,800 employees.

Although unsurprising, since the UK taxation for online gambling operators is very high, most of the online gambling sites are regulated and based offshore. The taxation of online casinos in the UK is under review since a number of the more prominent UK online betting operators have begun to move their operations to other jurisdictions, offshore.

At this time, however, UK online casinos are finding that the market is somewhat saturated, and are looking to expand elsewhere. Many have an eye on the French online gaming market since the new online gambling regulatory laws in France will allow foreign gambling operators to operate there. The online gaming market in France is far less saturated than that in the UK.

Although profits for UK online gambling operators are not necessarily down, they have seen somewhat of a leveling off when it comes to online casino and sports betting sites. Interestingly, the bingo sites are still reporting an increase in their income.

The attraction of expanding operations to France lies not only in the new market to be drawn upon, but mainly in the levels of taxation that are expected to be applied to online gambling in France. Although the exact rates are yet to be decided, it has been suggested that poker tax will be two percent, and that online sports betting taxation will be 7.5 percent.

France has only recently met with the approval of the European Commission as far as online gambling laws go. After the need to change some points to their initial proposal, France has recently defined a structure to regulate online gambling.