The UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) has released new operator data on gambling activity, showing that retail betting continued to see a fall in activity towards the back end of 2025.  

The data, which focuses on the period between October and December last year, showed that gross gambling yield (GGY) from high street betting shops fell by 7% year-on-year to £549m.

The total number of bets and spins also declined, falling by 1% to 3.1bn.

The statistics come as high street bookies face increasing pressure, with MP for Peckham and Minister for Devolution, Faith and Communities, Miatta Fahnbulleh, just this week speaking on her vision to address “the proliferation of betting shops”. 

William Hill owner Evoke also recently confirmed that it plans to close further shops, which followed Flutter Entertainment’s decision to begin rolling back Paddy Power’s retail betting suite across the UK and Ireland in late 2025.

Sports betting weakens

Online gambling revenue also fell slightly. Total online GGY in Q3 was £1.5bn – down 2% compared with the same quarter last year. This contrasts with previous UKGC reports from 2025 which showed growth for online gaming while retail betting continued to decline.

However, overall engagement increased, with the total number of bets and spins rising 6% to 27.4bn. Average monthly active online accounts dropped 2% to 12.7m.

Real event betting, including sports betting, saw a sharp decline. GGY fell by 18% to £530m, while the number of bets dropped by 6% and active accounts fell by 7%.

Operators may hope that the latter half of the domestic football season as well as the World Cup will drive a bounceback for real event betting later in the year – though there is the risk that tax rises will clear out a lot of profit to be made from these tournaments.

On a more positive note for businesses, online slots remained the strongest-growing product and once again spiked.

GGY rose by 10% year-on-year to £788m, with spin numbers up 7% to 25.7bn. Active accounts grew by 5% to an average of 4.6 million per month, as online slots reached record levels within the data set’s five-year history for the third consecutive quarter, but indicators of longer online slot play declined. 

Sessions lasting over one hour plummeted by 16% to 8.9 million and average session length decreased to 16 minutes, with long sessions accounting for 4.4% of all slot sessions, down from 6.2% a year earlier.

The stats come amid the wider political conversation around betting, as outlined above by the statements made by Fahnbulleh, as well as by the Housing and Communities Secretary, Steve Reed, regarding betting shops and adult gaming centres (AGCs).

The retail betting sector in particular is becoming subject of a political tug-of-war, to an extent, with Reform UK leader Nigel Farage warning that most bookmakers will be “gone within a year” due to recent changes on gambling taxes which were confirmed in the Autumn Budget.