Adult gaming centres are finally on the road to recovery. The latest dataset from the Gambling Commission issued this week has revealed that the high street AGC community is working its way back towards pre-Covid territory – at last.
First, the good news
The AGC sector recorded an 11.3 percent increase in gross gambling yield to £761.4m during the 2025/26 financial year, according to the GSGB’s latest dataset.
The figures, covering April 2025 to March 2026, show that AGC revenues rose from £684m the previous year, while the number of machines increased 5.6 percent to 80,665.
Good news then for the Gambling Levy, the Treasury, the Commission and the local authorities with circa 40-50 percent of that increase going back in tax, NICs, levy funds, licence fees and business rates. And the players too are enjoying a boost with upwards of 90 percent of machine play going out in winnings.
Now the bad news
But that momentum masks a worrying and continued trend of decline in operation numbers. Another 2 per cent fall saw the total number of gambling operations on the high street drop to just 8,081 – its lowest level in modern times.
And sub-8,000 is already baked in to next year’s figures as around 400 betting shops are already for the cut following the last budget, and a further 1,000 lay in purgatory pending Chancellor John Healey’s October Budget Statement.
Time to cut out the ‘discrimination’
And what about AGCs – the bete noire of the Prime Minister, who on Thursday somewhat ironically described the ban of alcohol at football matches as ‘discrimination’.
How, then, would he describe his own commentaries on AGCs – downright harassment?
Well that harassment is looking pretty much like a drunken Saturday night beating by Burnham given the latest Gambling Commission stats.
In 2012, there were 2,147 AGCs on the high street; by March 2022, the numbers had collapsed to 1,354, picking up just 95 in the last four years to reach its current level of 1,449.
That stands at a one third decline in the UK’s AGC estate over 14 years – a far cry from MP Dawn Butler’s chant that AGCs are “flooding” the high street.
For the fact checkers: there are 7,000 officially recognised high streets in Great Britain, and just 1,449 Adult Gaming Centres.
Bingo calls recovery, albeit fragile
Breaking down the Commission statistics further, land based bingo also delivered encouraging growth, with total GGY increasing 8.2 percent to £703.8m, compared with £650.4m the previous year.
Gaming machines accounted for £461.7m of this total, an increase of 8.9 percent, while bingo games generated £242.1m. The number of machines in bingo premises increased 3.4 percent to 74,694.
Machines make all the difference
Cat B was clearly the star of the show, representing a key driver of growth across both AGCs and land-based bingo, with revenues rising 16.1 percent to £613.4m in AGCs and 11.4 percent to £359.6m in bingo halls.
Generating an additional £121.9m across the two sectors, Cat B accounted for the entirety of AGC revenue growth and almost all of the increase in bingo gaming machine earnings.
Little surprise that it’s attracting plenty of lip-licking from the authorities. But if the Treasury takes away the lipstick and the gloss, there’ll be nowhere to put the machines…the very venues that are surviving on their machines income will all close.
The Tax’em and Burn’em principle is definitely not a solution.
In search of a CD drive
The picture for Cat C and Cat D was not as positive: C recorded its second annual decline to reach its lowest level since 2021/22, whilst D fell for the third year, also to its lowest level in four years.
Meanwhile, licensed family entertainment centres recorded GGY of £38.6m, a marginal 0.5 percent decline on the previous year. However, the figures exclude FECs operating under local authority permits and therefore do not represent the entire sector. The number of gaming machines in licensed FECs remained stable at 9,996, compared with 9,993 in March 2025.
The combined performance of AGCs, licensed FECs and non-remote bingo represents approximately £1.5bn in annual GGY, highlighting the continuing contribution of the low stakes gaming sector to Britain’s economy.
A stroll away from the high street
Across the wider gambling industry, total GGY increased 4.4 percent to £17.5bn, including lotteries. And the remote casino, betting and bingo sector generated £8.3bn, up 6.9 percent, while land-based gambling generated £4.9bn, a 1.1 percent increase.
Throughout the entire dataset of the Gambling Commission stats, the stark political reality is pretty obvious: how are we going to keep people on the high street? And the answer is glaringly obvious to the chosen few – and that doesn’t include the government.
Online casino is the real growth driver with GGY increasing by 14.8 percent to £5.7bn while slots generated £4.79bn (+15.5 pc)
Land-based venues have enough battles to fight on the commercial front. The latest stats prove they don’t need their government attacking them on the tax and regulatory front.
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