The UK Gambling Commission has released new statistics showing that a slight increase in the numbers of people residing in the UK are going online to put down stakes. While much of the increase is attested to the National Lottery and online poker, remote gambling is nonetheless on the rise from the previous year. Far from being an epidemic growth trend, the statistics show that approximately 6% of 8,000 respondents had participated in remote gambling (excluding the National Lottery) from June 2006 through June 2007.

The statistics were derived from an 8,000 participant survey conducted by ICM Research over the course of the aforementioned dates. Giving quarterly averages of the survey results, ICM reported that 8.6% of those surveyed stated they had participated in one form of online gambling or another, which was a 7.4% increase from the calendar year in 2006. In regards to the National Lottery, 6.3% of those surveyed said they had remotely purchased lottery tickets.

While keeping a close eye on problem and underage gambling certainly is one of the top duties of the UK Gambling Commission (which the results of this study will certainly help in doing), online casino operators doing business in the UK can certainly use the figures of this research to shed insight about the direction the UK gaming industry is going, especially in regards to new forms of remote wagering and bettor demographics. According to the survey, placing remote bets from personal computers and laptops remains the most popular method (6.7% of those surveyed), while betting from mobile phones accounted for nearly 3% and interactive television just under 2% of those surveyed.

One component of the survey that could prove misleading is that the average survey participant was shown to be male between the ages of 18 and 34. According to eCOGRA's online gambling survey published earlier this year (the largest and most comprehensive survey of online bettors to date), the average casino player is female, while the average poker player is male. eCOGRA's survey also showed characteristic differences in betting style and preference between sexes, something which the UK Gambling Commission's study was not overtly concerned with.