{"id":323584,"date":"2025-08-06T22:05:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T22:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/323584\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T22:05:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T22:05:11","slug":"hedging-bets-who-are-the-people-driving-up-gambling-figures-in-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/323584\/","title":{"rendered":"Hedging bets: Who are the people driving up gambling figures in Europe?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n

The number of customers in the European Union and the United Kingdom on online gambling platforms reached 38.6 million last year, representing a 19% increase from the 32.5 million recorded in 2023, according to the European Gaming and Betting Association (EGBA).\u00a0<\/p>\n

While this is an upward trend over the past five years, the number of people looking for help to stop gambling addiction across Europe has also increased.<\/p>\n

Data from The Lancet from 2024 claims that 54.7 million men worldwide experienced gambling disorders or problematic gambling, compared to 25.3 million women.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gambling can lead to serious harms to health, including financial stress, relationship breakdown, family violence, mental illness and suicide, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).<\/p>\n

EGBA’s members represent approximately 30% of Europe’s 2024 online gambling gross gaming revenue. Its members include Bet365 and Entain, which owns Ladbrokes and Paddy Power.<\/p>\n

In 2024, three-quarters of customers were male, marking an increase from 72% in 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Among women, this figure dropped from 28% in 2023 to 25% in 2024.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

People aged between 26 and 35 years and between 36 and 50 years make up the biggest share of gamblers, each representing 29% of customers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Europe, online casinos currently remain the largest contributor at \u20ac21.5 billion, followed by sports and events betting at \u20ac13.7 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Both are projected to grow by around 7% annually until 2029.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a result, EU and national lawmakers are tightening rules and aim to combat the trivialisation of gambling.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For instance, Germany prohibits online gambling altogether, while other member states allow it but only under restricted circumstances.<\/p>\n

Gambling among young students<\/p>\n

Although underage gambling is illegal in European countries, a 2024 study<\/a> conducted by the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) reveals that, on average, 23% of students aged 15 to 16 across 37 European countries reported having gambled for money in the past 12 months.<\/p>\n

This gambling occurred either in person or online and involved games of chance, such as slot machines, card games, dice games, lotteries, or betting on sports and animal races.<\/p>\n

Italy has the highest prevalence of gambling among students, at 45%, followed by Greece, at 36%.<\/p>\n

In contrast, the lowest rate is observed in Georgia, at 9.5%.<\/p>\n

A 2025 study conducted by Italian researchers using ESPAD data found that Southern European and Balkan countries are in the high-prevalence group, while Eastern European countries fall into the medium-prevalence group. Scandinavian and Central European countries predominantly belong to the low-prevalence group.<\/p>\n

Experts have also noted that while women are less likely to start gambling, they tend to progress to problem gambling more quickly.<\/p>\n

Online gambling has also seen a considerable growth, with participation rates growing by more than half among boys, from 13% in 2019 to 20% in 2024, and tripling among girls, from 2.7% in 2019 to 8.7% in 2024.<\/p>\n

The percentage of student gamblers exhibiting a potentially harmful gambling profile has increased notably, nearly doubling from 4.7% in 2019 to 8.5% in 2024. <\/p>\n

While this proportion remains much higher among boys, the increase is more pronounced among girls.<\/p>\n

“Environmental and contextual factors play a more significant role in initiating gambling behaviour, while individual characteristics have a greater impact on the likelihood of being at risk,” researchers Elisa Benedetti, Gabriele Lombardi, Rodolfo Cotichini, Sonia Cerrai, Marco Scalese, and Sabrina Molinaro stated in the study.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ADVERTISEMENT The number of customers in the European Union and the United Kingdom on online gambling platforms reached…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[4304,33727,2000,299,5187,6732],"class_list":{"0":"post-323584","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-betting","9":"tag-casino","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-gambling"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114984093348637641","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}