Credit: Alan Stanton, flickr
Trying to find out how many betting shops are operating in the UK is akin to trying to crack the Da Vinci Code.
In theory, the UK Gambling Commission should have access to this information. However, after we posed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, they pointed us in the direction of their Register of Gambling Premises.
This suggests that there are 6,335 licensed premises currently in operation in the UK, but we know this isn’t an accurate figure – reasons for that are detailed below.
The Commission themselves told us that they ‘cannot provide any assurances on the completeness and accuracy of this data’, so it’s hard to get a precise figure on the number of UK betting shops still open… or how many closed in 2025.
“The Gambling Commission does not retain historical records or previously published versions of the premises licence register,” they told us.
“The register is generated dynamically, pulling data directly from our live systems at the point of publication.
“As such, we do not hold specific records of premises licences for previous years.”
That being said, through historic data and some educated guesswork, we can confirm roughly how many betting shops closed in the UK in 2025.
UK Betting Shop Data 2025
So let’s start by piecing together some data as presented by the Gambling Commission in their quarterly reports.
As of March 2025, there were 5,825 betting shops open in the UK – a 1.8% decrease, by the way, on the same figure for March 2024.
The Gambling Commission publishes quarterly updates, but these are reported around five months after the fact – for example, the data for March-June 2025 was published in November.
And so we will have separate updates for the second half of 2025 in February and May 2026. We will revise this article accordingly.
Covering the period April-June 2025, the regulator confirmed that there 5,789 betting shops open in the UK.
At a glance:
- UK betting shops (as of March 2025) – 5,825
- UK betting shops (as of June 2025) – 5,789
So, as you can see, there were 36 betting shop closures between March and June 2025. And that number will have grown exponentially in the second half of the year…
Paddy Power Announces Betting Shop Closures
In October 2025, Irish gambling giant Paddy Power confirmed that they were closing 57 of their betting shops.
Of those, 29 were based in the UK and 28 in the Republic of Ireland. Around 247 members of staff faced either redundancy or redeployment.
A spokesperson for Paddy Power’s parent company, Flutter, commented:
“We are continually reviewing our high street estate, but it remains a key part of our offer to customers, and we are seeking to innovate and invest where we can as we adapt to different customer trends and needs.”
So while Paddy Power won’t be disappearing from our high streets any time soon, given the relative positivity of that quote, it’s clear that any shops that aren’t making money are very much on the chopping block.
Elsewhere, there were one-off closures of shops that weren’t making enough money to cover their rent or other costs – a branch of William Hill on Church Street in Blackpool, one of the longest-standing shops on the road, closed in December.
So, if we take the 27 Paddy Power shop that were shuttered on UK soil and add into the mix that Blackpool closure, that’s a further 28 to be removed from the overall number:
- UK betting shops (as of June 2025) – 5,789
- UK betting shops (as of December 2025) – approximately 5,761
Why are So Many Betting Shops Closing?
UK betting shops, like the retail sector as a whole, have faced a series of challenges in recent years.
In 2019, the maximum stake on FOBTs – Fixed Odds Betting Terminals – was reduced from £100 to £2. This has improved customer welfare markedly, while simultaneously cutting the profitability of betting shops considerably.
Such were margins impaired that, when the global crisis hit, some firms decided not to re-open some of their shops. And when footfall was sluggish to return to some towns and cities even after restrictions were lifted, that hastened the departure of even more.
As one door closes, another opens: in recent years, betting operators have revealed record profits for their online channels – in direct correlation with a marked drop-off in activity in their high street stores.
Factor in the rising costs of business and you have a recipe for disaster. When announcing their mass closure in October 2025, a spokesperson for Paddy Power cited ‘increasing cost pressures and challenging market conditions’.
That confirmed statistics released by the Gambling Commission for July-September 2025, which revealed that the total gross gambling yield for UK betting shops had fallen by some 5% on the same quarter in 2024.
All told, it was a pretty dismal year for the UK retail betting sector… what will 2026 have in store?