Online gambling worse in most deprived areas

Participation in online gambling is disproportionately concentrated in the most deprived areas of the UK with these players more likely to incur heavy losses, a study has found.

Some 29 per cent of gaming accounts are registered to people in the most deprived areas while 13 per cent come from the least deprived areas, according to the report by the National Centre for Social Research and the University of Liverpool for the charity Gambleaware.

Patterns of Play also found the bottom 20 per cent of deprived areas accounted for 25 per cent of losses, compared with 15 per cent of losses in the 20 per cent least deprived areas.