The UK government has estimated that new online slot stake limits will cost the industry £166.2m in gross gaming revenue per year.
A limit of £5 per stake for players aged 25 and over will be introduced from September, alongside a £2 limit for 18-24s.
The plans, announced on Friday, form part of the UK’s white paper on gambling reform seeking to bring the country’s gambling legislation into the digital age.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport added that the new limits could see gross gambling yield reduce as a percentage of online slots GGY in 2022-23 by 5.2 per cent.
There could also be a GGY reduction as a percentage of total remote GGY in 2022-23 of 2.6 per cent.
“We believe that a £5 limit will achieve the government’s stated objectives in a proportionate way, with a lower risk of unintended consequences such as displacement to the illegal online market,” the DCMS said.
“Around 20 per cent of customers currently choose to stake over £5 on a spin at least once a year (so will be impacted by this measure), but only 0.6 per cent of all spins are over £5.”
The DCMS said the £5 limit “takes consideration of the structural differences between land-based in-person gambling and online play,” aligning with the limit for B1 machines in casinos.
As for the £2 limit, the government revealed that 30 per cent of consultation respondents were in favour of a separate, lower limit.
Only three per cent supported a £4 limit, while 29 per cent supported a limit consistent with the limit for all adults but with “extra operator vigilance.”
It added that some respondents suggested an young adults could be “particularly incentivised to gamble via the unlicensed sector in order to access higher stakes, potentially setting them up for a lifelong connection to the illegal online market.”
Other respondents said the lower limit for younger players would “require extensive development by operators and software providers and would be far more complex and costly to implement than a universal limit” – and could take over nine months to implement.
Twenty-four of the 96 responses to the question asking about a limit for all adults were from gambling industry representatives.
“Nearly all” of those argued for a £10 limit to “strike a balance between protection and freedom,” the DCMS said.
“We have committed to introducing a maximum stake limit for online slots games to minimise the risk of runaway or rapid losses which can contribute significantly to gambling-related harm,” it added.
“Boundary-pushing” products such as slingo, which “combine fundamentally slots-type gameplay elements with other games like bingo” will be subject to the limit.
“Having worked with the Gambling Commission, we are confident that these games can adequately be captured by the Gambling Commission’s existing definition, although this is ultimately subject to due legal process on interpretation,” the DCMS said.
