Bet crazy Brits spend £1.5 billion a year on-line
1 October 2005
Bet crazy Brits are splashing out a staggering £1.5 billion-a-year on on-line gambling, a new survey has revealed.
Football, lottery, horseracing, poker and casino sites are the country’s big favourites according to a poll for Virgin Money - and Londoners have emerged as the biggest spenders.
Most Brits admit to staking between £10 and £20-a-week having a flutter while 40 per cent of Scots spend £50.
But Londoners are the nation’s biggest gamblers with one in ten spending between £300 and £500-a-week.
Virgin Money polled more than 2,000 people to discover the scale of the nation’s online betting fascination – and an incredible 93 per cent admitted they have had a crack.
More new punters are chasing the dream all the time with nearly half the people polled admitting they have started gambling online in the past six months.
Football sites are tops with men, 40 per cent visiting them daily and the same number betting once a week.
Lottery and casino games are men’s other big favourites.
But women provided the biggest shock. Their main gambling interest is the lottery, but second on their ‘must-bet’ list is horseracing, once regarded as a mainly male fascination.
Punters in the Midlands and East Anglia are the most frequent online betters with nearly one in three admitting to having a flutter more than once a day.
People in the South West spend most time playing poker, backing horses or trying other sites on the web – one in 20 confessing to spending up to five hours online a day.
The vast majority of online punters, nearly 80 per cent, will spend a minimum of one hour a week betting on line – but that equates to more than a working week each year gambling on the web.
Most of the gambling population use their own computers at home to enjoy their new hobby and they pay for their fun with credit and debit cards.
But up to 10 per cent nationally admit to using computers at work, that figure rising to 18 per cent in London and the North East.
And five per cent nationally confess to buying a PC or laptop specifically so they can bet.
The seductive power of gambling has resulted in 10 per cent of the online betting community insisting that having a flutter online is now their main pastimes. But that figure rises to one in five of online gamblers in Scotland and East Anglia.
A spokesman for Virgin Money said: "There’s no doubt online gambling and betting has become incredibly popular across the country – and these figures prove it.
"The internet – as with so many other areas of life - has simply made something people already enjoy even easier to access and new sites are springing up all the time.
"Gambling can be both fun and rewarding but punters should only spend what they can afford to lose."
