The U.K. Gambling Commission late last year released updated data on its gambling market, which highlighted the fact that now a third of all gambling dollars in the country come over the internet.

The Commission said that online gambling generated 4.5 billion over a 12-month period (April 2015 to March 2016), which was 33 percent of the entire gambling market. That includes the lottery, the 148 brick-and-mortar casinos and nearly 9,000 betting shops in the country.

That means that gamblers now lose about 13.6 billion ($17 billion USD) each year in the U.K., an increase of more than 20 percent since 2014. For comparison, the entire casino gambling market in America (commercial and tribal) is worth about $70 billion annually.

Growth in the U.S. casino gambling sector has been much less dramatic.

Online casinos in the U.K. represented 29 percent of the overall market between April 2014 and March 2015, the government said. The Commission also noted that the number of brick-and-mortar betting shops has decreased by about two percent over the aforementioned period. No additional land-based casinos have opened up during the time frame.

Online sports betting is regulated in the U.K., leading the country to crack down on illegal betting on games, whether they are real life sporting events or even video games.

The breakdown for online gambling in the U.K. is as follows:

Table Games: 2.6 billion Sports Betting: 1.6 billion Slots: 1.8 billion Bingo: 153 million Betting Exchanges: 152 million

James Green, program director for the Commission, said in a statement:

Our latest statistics show that with the growth in online gambling the industry is increasingly taking a creative approach to using technology to engage consumers. As the online sector grows operators will also need to demonstrate that they are taking an equally innovative approach to ensuring gambling is safe for all online consumers.

Link:

Online Casinos Generate A Third Of UK Gambling Dollars - CardPlayer.com