UK Youth Gambling With Own Money Falls to 26%, but Most Pupils Still Recall Adverts

Fewer children in Great Britain are spending their own money on gambling, but almost all of them still see it advertised. That gap sits at the centre of the Gambling Commission's Young People and Gambling 2026 statistics, published on 12 November and now under challenge days before Safer Gambling Week.

The survey covers 3,867 pupils aged 11 to 17. The share who spent their own money on gambling in the past year is 26%, down from 30% in the 2025 survey and 31% in 2022, according to CasinoBeats' report of the figures. Only 5% had spent their own money on age-restricted products, so most youth spending falls outside adult-only categories. Ben Haden, the Commission's Director of Research and Statistics, said the priority was making sure children cannot spend money on such products.

Exposure is the harder number. Some 89% of pupils recalled gambling marketing of some kind over the past year, and boys were more likely than girls to report adverts across platforms. Virtual loot boxes add another channel: 22% of the age group had opened them with their own money, and 82% were familiar with activity involving items inside games. Ygam chief executive Emily Tofield welcomed the fall in under-18 participation but argued that advertising and loot boxes still normalise gambling from an early age. The youth screening tool placed 2.0% of respondents in the 'at risk' band, a small group that the headline average does not describe.

The method is now the contested part. Critic Dan Waugh, in pre-publication analysis, argues that self-report questionnaires completed in class, among peers, may produce misleading answers. He points to an implied figure of more than 32,000 British schoolchildren playing casino table games in casinos in a year. He also notes that 228 children credited an advert with prompting them to gamble, while 125 of that group reported spending nothing on gambling in the year before the survey. These are his criticisms of the data, not established errors, and the reporting here does not include a Commission response to them.

Analysis: a falling participation rate supports those who think current controls are working, and high recall supports campaigners pressing for tighter advertising and loot-box rules. Both readings depend on whether a self-completed school survey measures behaviour reliably enough to guide rule-making. If the answers are weak at the margins, the policy debate moves from the headline rate to what the Commission can verify. The unresolved question is whether this report can bear the weight now being placed on it.