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Consumers in Northern Ireland are heavier gamblers than those in Great Britain, but significantly less likely to spend their money on amusement machines such as slots, according to a new survey conducted for the province’s Department for Social Development. They are also much more likely to be problem gamblers.
The survey found that 75 percent of the Northern Irish adult population had gambled in the past 12 months, against 68 percent in Great Britain.
The most popular gambling pastime in the province was The National Lottery, played by 51 percent of adults within the past year.
Other popular activities included raffles, in which 38.5 percent participated; scratch-cards, attracting 27.9 percent; and betting with a bookmaker (including bets placed by phone), which had been done by 19.9 percent.
However, Great Britain – comprising England, Scotland and Wales – had higher participation rates in many forms of gambling. Fourteen percent of Britons had played amusement machines, against just six percent in Northern Ireland. Other types of gaming where the British were more active included The National Lottery (57 percent against Northern Ireland’s 51 percent), bingo (seven percent against four percent), nd table games (four percent against one percent).
Despite this, problem gambling appears to be a bigger challenge in Northern Ireland than in Britain. The survey showed that 2.2 percent of respondents were problem gamblers, although the researchers said that given such surveys are rarely perfectly representative of the population as a whole, the likely true value lay between 1.3 and 3.1 percent – in any case, notably higher than the 0.5 percent of adults classified as problem gamblers in Britain’s 2007 Gambling Prevalence Survey.
