Is Britain Falling Out Of Love With Gambling?
There was a time when most people in the country gambled in one form or another. You only need to read a piece about the extent to which something like greyhound racing, the football pools or bingo used to be much popular than it currently is to realise that gambling is a much less popular pastime now than it used to be. There are reasons for the decline of such previously popular betting choices, of course. For starters, the launch of the National Lottery in 1997 meant that people were less inclined to bet on more complex things, such as the pools.
Yet even lottery betting appears to have dropped off in recent years compared to when it launched. Regardless of the type of betting that you look at, does it seem to have dropped off a bit when compared to previous years? If so, why might that be happening? Is it all down to the manner in which gambling is now much more frowned upon than it used to be? Or is the extent to which gambling in the United Kingdom is more regulated than ever before that has turned people away from it as a way of spending their time?
How Gambling Was Viewed In The Past
When we think of the past, we often think of a generation that was much more fire and brimstone than modern people. Religion was far more influential than it is today, with many religions not happy with their followers placing bets. Yet, in reality, people were far more inclined to take part in what might be considered ‘gentler’ forms of betting than they do nowadays. The likes of going to the bingo, playing the football pools and having a night at the dogs were all incredibly popular ways of spending free time in years long forgotten.
As an example of this, you need only look at greyhound racing. In 1946, attendances at greyhound stadiums up and down the United Kingdom peaked at about 70 million, with the totalisator turnover alone hitting nearly £200 million. In the modern world, less than two million people head to the greyhound tracks. The total amount bet on the greyhounds most years is roughly equivalent to what just the tote would take back when greyhounds were at their most popular. Of course, back then the tote was the only way of placing legal bets, but the point still stands.
A similar story can be told about the football pools. Revenue taken by the pools in 1947 stood at around £70 million, with ten million people playing the pools in 1994. It was huge business and most people that gambled in one form or another enjoyed playing the pools. By 2007, the number of people playing the football pools had dropped to 700,000. That is an incredible drop off, but does it truly reflect that fewer people were gambling or just that fewer people were playing the football pools and filling out the coupons?
The National Lottery
Perhaps the best example of a betting pastime that can accurately reflect how much Britain loves, or doesn’t love, gambling is the National Lottery. When the National Lottery was first launched on the 19th of November in 1994, 47,943,564 tickets were sold. By December of that year, that had crept up to 61,495,564, remaining in the low 50 millions for the rest of the year. Move on 12 months and you’ll see that nearly 79 million tickets were sold for the lottery draw on the 30th of December, indicating just how popular it was.
Those ticket sales also show that it wasn’t just a flash in the pan. Indeed, when you look at 1996 you’ll see that the most popular date for buying lottery tickets was the sixth of January, when close to 128 million tickets were bought by the public. That was, though, very much the peak of National Lottery ticket sales, with the numbers dropping year on year following that. By 2003, the sales figures had dropped below that initial burst for the first draw, with that year’s most popular draw seeing 46,156,745 being bought by the British public, who were falling out of love with it.
Flash forward to 2021 and you’ll find that the number of tickets being bought had fallen even further. The most popular draw came at the end of November, when 28.3 million tickets were sold. Of course, the thing we do need to bear in mind in this discussion is that there are more lottery draws than ever taking place nowadays. In addition to the Lotto, there is also the EuroMillions and the Thunderball, to name but a few. Even so, it is stark to see just how much the drop off in the lottery’s popularity has been in the years since it launched.
Why Is Gambling Less Popular?
Knowing the gambling has become a less popular pastime, as certainly seems to be the case, is one thing, but understanding the causes behind that is something else entirely. It is obviously difficult to put an exact cause onto anything, but we can at least consider certain reasons for things happening. When it comes to the modern era, younger people are much more likely to be aware of the dangers and downfalls of getting caught up in the world of betting, not least of all because it has become something of a topic for the likes of the United Kingdom Gambling Commission to attack.
The UKGC has introduced numerous different methods of legislation in the past few years that has made it more and more unpalatable for people to place bets. Though they are, in actual fact, designed to make betting safer for those that do it, the likes of Know Your Customer protocols mean that people aren’t as keen to bet, given that it means giving over a lot of information about themselves. This is likely to have put some people off and doesn’t necessarily show any signs of abating any time soon, which won’t help the gambling industry’s cause.
It is also entirely possible that it isn’t actually less popular than in the past. Instead, it is likely that there are now just more options for people who like to place a bet. Wagers on the totalisator in the world of greyhound racing were all the money that could legally be placed on the dogs back in the 1940s, but nowadays you can bet on horse racing in France, dogs in London and then head to a casino to play the roulette, all from the comfort of your own home. The options for bettors are numerous, so gambling might just be more thinly spread than ever.
