Online gaming is the fastest growing pastime in Britain

Online gaming is the fastest growing pastime in Britain

Wednesday, 15 September 2010

Like Mark Twain, reports of the death of online poker have been greatly exaggerated, in the UK at least. A new report from Nielsen Media Research has revealed a 40% increase in Internet gaming in Britain over the past year. To put that in perspective an extra 3.2m people visited online gaming sites compared to the extra 2.2m users who accessed Facebook.

Of course not all of the 40% of new players are online poker players with National Lottery provider Camelot heading the list of online growers. A substantial minority of the new users did head to Internet poker sites though. According to the report it was Party Poker that experienced the sharpest upturn with 870,000 extra visitors last year, a 174% rise in customers.


Unsurprisingly, it's middle aged men who have largely driven the growth but the demographic appears to be expanding. Neil Beston of Nielsen said, "While the phenomenal growth in gambling sites over the last two years has been driven by men and women of all ages, it appears to be powered particularly by middle-aged men, the well-educated and high-earning households."


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