Historically the gambling market in Britain has been dominated by cash. However, in more recent times debit card payments have become the predominant form of payment in Britain, including in the gambling market. Within this context, we examine what transaction data for a sample of over 6 million cards over 4 years can tell us about gambling in Britain. We document a number of novel stylised facts of gambling in Britain. The geographic spread of our data reveals important variation in gambling intensity across Britain. We document important correlates of gambling behaviour at a local level including deprivation, ethnicity, and licensed premises locations. Areas tend to have more gambling spending as a share of total consumption if they are more deprived, have a higher share of ethnic minority residents, and have at least one licensed gambling premises. In addition to these cross-sectional comparisons we also detail how these characteristics relate to changes in gambling over time. Including that recent increases in gambling spend as a percentage of total spend are highest in the most deprived areas.
