The British gambling market is one of the most saturated ones around the world. The U.K. Government has been active in refining the gambling regulations in order to both increase revenue from the sector and to establish better control and monitoring over the operators.
A big change in regulations will be the PoC tax – Point of Consumption, which will increase the taxes that gambling operators must pay. Despite that ‘bad news’ for the industry, it has positive reports for the future with more than £3 billion turnover for the upcoming years. This increase is estimated by this year’s growth of 12%. The new PoC tax is reported to bring close to £400 million more to the government from taxes, if the steady growth continues with the same pace.
What the Future Holds
The Gambling Compliance Research has also reported a steady growth in the online gambling sector between 10% and 15% for the upcoming three years up to £3.2 billion.
The manager of GCRS comments that there is currently an increase in activity on the side of online operators as they all are in a tight competition to gain better revenue before the implementation of the Point of Consumption tax. According the company’s report, the current market is extremely crowded and competition is fierce – operators are working on how to best integrate their business practices for the new tax. Combine that with the fight over new clients, the online gambling market has never been more intense.
Intense Fight Over Market Share
Back in 2013, the company with the highest market share among online operators was William Hill with close to 15% market share. The second spot was taken by bet365 which was doing its best to gain more power among the tight competition, increasing its share with 20% compared to 2013. Bet365 was in a dominant position in the UK gambling market in 2012 with a 24% share, yet that power has shifted dramatically for the past two years, another example of the intensive nature of the U.K. online gambling market
William Hill states that it is focusing on allocating its business power to other countries of interest before the December PoC tax is implemented. From a company that drew most of its revenue from high betting shops, it is now earning close to half of its profits from Australian-based online and offline operators. Other major actors in the industry are Betfair, Paddy Power and Stan James.
The struggle for more clients continues, sports betting and online gambling are becoming more and more popular among UK gamblers, and around the world as well. The shift towards online gambling with the help of better and more accessible software has drawn the Government’s attention as well, which is seeking to benefit from the ever expanding ‘blue ocean’ online market.
