Two-Thirds of UK Bingo Hall Revenue Now Comes From Gaming Machines, UKGC Confirms
UK bingo halls now make most of their money from slot machines, not bingo. That is the official position, set out by the Gambling Commission’s Acting Chief Executive Sarah Gardner in her first major sector speech of the year.
Gardner addressed the Bingo Association’s annual general meeting on 7 May, a week after Andrew Rhodes formally stepped down as the Commission’s Chief Executive. The figures she presented for the 2024/25 financial year are the reason the speech deserves more attention than the trade press has given it.
The £816m sector — and what is inside it
Total Gross Gambling Yield for the UK bingo sector in 2024/25 came in at £816 million. The wider gambling industry sits at £16.8 billion. So bingo is a fairly small piece of that whole, somewhere around 5%. Land-based operators were responsible for £650 million of the bingo figure. Online sites made up the other £166 million.
The detail Gardner went on to give about the £650 million is where the headline lives. Two thirds of land-based bingo revenue — about £423 million of the £650 million — came from gaming machines. Only 35% came from bingo games themselves. A bingo hall, on the official numbers, is now a slot venue with a bingo room attached.
What Gardner actually announced
The speech itself was collaborative in tone and almost entirely focused on land-based bingo. Gardner thanked the outgoing Bingo Association Chief Executive Miles Baron — this was his last AGM in the role — and welcomed his successor Nicole. On policy, she announced that from 29 July 2026, operators will have to pull non-compliant gaming machines off the floor as soon as the Commission flags them. The full response to the gaming machines consultation is due later this summer. That bigger piece of work has been running since early 2025.
The other big announcement was money. £26 million in new government funding over three years, much of it earmarked for tackling unlicensed gambling. Gardner said the Commission has been “held back” on this front for too long, and the numbers behind that line do not flatter the regulator. The illegal market in Britain is now thought to be worth around £16.6 billion a year, up from roughly £5 billion in 2019.
Online bingo got a footnote
Online bingo got one number — the £166 million figure — and almost no commentary. There was nothing in the speech about Remote Gaming Duty, nothing about the operational pressure online operators are reporting under the new 40% rate, nothing about how the January promotional reforms are landing six months in. For an annual sector address from the regulator, that is a striking quiet.
It is also reasonable, in fairness. The Bingo Association represents land-based operators primarily, and Gardner’s speech was tailored to her audience. The trade body for online gambling is a different organisation. But the absence still tells you something. The near-term pressure on online bingo is not coming from the UKGC. It is coming from the Treasury.
Remote Gaming Duty doubled from 21% to 40% on 1 April. Six weeks in, the effects are concrete. Sun Bingo has been placed under formal operational review by Playtech, the supplier that runs the white-label site for News UK. Other operators across the major platforms have reduced welcome offer values since April, and several network sites cut welcome bonus generosity to fall in line with the January cap of 10x wagering on bonus funds. The next round of changes — tighter wagering, smaller bonuses, slower paydays, brands winding down — will come from operator margin maths rather than Commission policy.
Land-based bingo’s two-speed reality
The recent abolition of Bingo Duty has been played by some commentators as a sector-wide win, but the relief applies only to traditional bingo games at land-based venues — the smaller share of hall revenue. The gaming machine portion still pays the same duty it always did. The bigger share carries on as before.
Established operators with strong machine estates are weathering the wider pressure better than online-only competitors. Castle Leisure, the company behind Castle Bingo, reported 2025 revenue of £38.8 million with profits up — a notable result against a contracting overall picture, and a reminder that the land-based and online sides of UK bingo are now diverging quickly.
New leadership on both sides
Gardner is acting CEO until a permanent replacement for Rhodes is named, and her speech leaned into continuity rather than change. Implementation of the Gambling Act Review remains the headline priority. The data-improvement work with the bingo trade body — adding a question to the Gambling Survey for Great Britain to better distinguish in-club bingo from other forms — continues. The full Gaming Machines consultation response is targeted for this summer.
The Bingo Association is in transition too. Miles Baron’s last AGM as chief executive coincided with Gardner’s first annual speech to the trade body. Nicole takes over as incoming CEO. Whatever changes the next year brings to UK bingo, both sides of the regulator and trade body relationship are now under new management.
What to watch from here
The practical things online bingo players should keep an eye on over the next few months are commercial events, not regulator ones.
Watch for more brands following Sun Bingo into operational review, particularly mid-tier sites without a large parent group’s balance sheet to absorb margin compression. Watch for further tightening of welcome offers as operators digest the duty hike — the January cap on wagering and the ban on mixed-product promotions are now baked in, so the next adjustments will appear in headline values, win caps, and qualifying deposit thresholds. And keep an eye on the Treasury’s autumn Budget. The April duty hike is unlikely to be the final word on gambling tax.
The UKGC, meanwhile, will keep doing what Gardner described in her speech: working with operators willing to comply, pursuing the ones who don’t, and channelling its new £26 million budget largely into the illegal-market problem. None of that materially changes what an online bingo player should be looking for when picking a site. The questions remain the same: is it licensed, are the wagering terms reasonable, does it pay out promptly? And — added to that list this year — does the operator look stable, or does it look like a brand quietly reducing its commitment to UK bingo?
