The UK government’s plans to give councils greater control over gambling premises have reignited fierce debate about the future of betting shops on the high street.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham appeared to shift the focus of the plans by including betting shops in a video highlighting businesses he suggested local communities had not asked for.
Writing in The Spectator, author Rupert Hawksley questioned why the government was targeting an industry already experiencing dramatic decline across the UK.
There were 8,882 betting shops in the UK in 2015, falling to 5,872 by 2025, with Betfred recently announcing plans to close 132 shops and cut 600 jobs.
More than one in five William Hill shops have reportedly closed in the past year, with the article linking those closures to gambling tax increases introduced in last year’s Budget.
Hawksley also challenged the assumption that removing betting shops would automatically lead to high street regeneration, pointing to the 70,000 empty shops already across the UK.
The Spectator frames the broader campaign against gambling as ideological, warning that affordability checks and other restrictions risk pushing consumers towards the black market.
With new gambling minister Vicky Foxcroft also eyeing restrictions on gambling advertising during live sport, the piece warns that further industry crackdowns may be on the horizon.
On the other side of the debate, Labour MP Dawn Butler celebrated what she described as a major victory as the government announced plans to scrap the “aim to permit” principle from the Gambling Act.
Writing in The Guardian, Butler argued that the existing system had left councils with limited ability to reject new betting shops, casinos and adult gaming centres, even when local residents opposed them.
She traced her campaign back to 2021, describing efforts including taking ministers to Harlesden high street and organising a cross-party letter backed by more than 280 MPs, councillors, mayors and gambling reform advocates.
Butler highlighted that in Brent, gambling venues outnumber supermarkets in 17 of the borough’s 22 wards, with 81 licensed gambling venues operating across the area.
She urged communities to use their new powers, arguing that local people should be able to “take back” their high streets from businesses she says are profiting from gambling-related harm.
Across the Atlantic, a Bloomberg report revealed that sports betting is increasingly competing with stocks as a financial destination for younger American investors.
A Betterment survey of 1,000 US retail investors found that 26% of Gen Z investors born between 1997 and 2007 consider sports betting a deliberate, ongoing component of their financial plans.
That figure compares starkly with 14% of millennials, 6% of Gen X, and just 1% of baby boomers who view sports betting similarly.
More than half of young investors said they had redirected money originally intended for investing into sports betting over the past year, with 14% doing so multiple times a month.
Legal sports betting has grown into an almost $17bn US industry, with Robinhood launching prediction markets in its app in 2025 and describing it as the fastest-growing unit in company history.
Bloomberg profiled one 32-year-old bettor who applies an investment mindset to his wagers, limiting himself to $100 per bet and making roughly $2,500 this year to fund a holiday.
Betterment CEO Sarah Levy cautioned that treating sportsbooks or prediction markets as retirement strategies represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what they are designed to do.
