Underage Lottery Gambling Declines In UK

In the UK, the National Lottery Commission has released the results of a recent survey into underage gambling showing that the numbers of children buying lottery products has dropped to their lowest levels in over a decade.

The British Survey Of Children, The National Lottery And Gambling was conducted by Ipsos MORI and the Centre For The Study Of Gambling At The University Of Salford in May and polled 9,000 twelve to 15-year-olds in England and Wales.

The only British independent underage research of its kind, the survey was commissioned the National Lottery Commission as a way of testing the effectiveness of operator Camelot’s child protection measures.

The Commission revealed that only two percent of those polled revealed that they had purchased a Lotto product with their own money in the past seven days, which was down from five percent in 2006. Although four percent claimed to have bought scratchcards, this was a decrease from six percent in 2006 and nine percent in 2000. In addition, just one percent revealed that they had attempted to purchase other National Lottery games, which compared to six percent in 2006.

The researchh found that of the 96 percent of those polled that had been on the Internet in the past week, 27 percent had bought things but only 0.3 percent claimed to have spent money on National Lottery games.

“This continuing decline in underage play shows that an effective regulatory framework together with a socially responsible operator makes it very difficult for children to access National Lottery products,” said Dr Anne Wright, Chairperson for the National Lottery Commission.

“But there is no room for complacency. We need to continue to identify ways to prevent the small percentage of children who claim to be playing from accessing games. We will look carefully at the research findings and continue to work with Camelot to see where we might make these controls even more effective to maintain the downward trend.”