Gambling Addiction Statistics: 80 Million Adults, and the Numbers Behind Them

How many people are addicted to gambling? The answer ranges from under 1% of adults in Hong Kong and Macau to nearly 1 in 5 adults in Australia. Much of that gap comes from what each survey counts. The bigger story is who carries the risk, how much money comes from people already in trouble, and how few ever get help.

Short answer: The World Health Organization estimates that 1.2% of the world’s adults have a gambling disorder. The Lancet Public Health Commission puts the number of adults with a gambling disorder or problem gambling at about 80 million. Far more, around 448.7 million, show at least one sign of gambling harm.

Figures come from the latest official surveys and peer-reviewed studies available as of November 2026. Each one is labeled with its data year.

At a glance

• About 80 million adults worldwide have a gambling disorder or problem gambling.
• In the US, 2.5 million adults have a severe gambling problem, and another 5 to 8 million have mild or moderate problems.
• 19.4% of Australian adults gambled at risky levels in 2025, up from 13.7% a year earlier.
• 15.8% of adults who gamble on online casinos or slots have a gambling disorder.
• Men are 3.4 times more likely than women to have a gambling problem.
• People gambling at harmful levels generate about 60% of all gambling losses.
• People with a gambling disorder have about five times the suicide risk of the general population.
• Only 1 in 5 people with problem gambling have ever sought help.

1.2% or 448 Million: It Depends What You Count

At least five different numbers get called “how many people are addicted to gambling.” Each one counts something different, and articles often switch between them without saying so.

The gap comes from definitions. A gambling disorder is a clinical diagnosis and the narrowest measure. “Problem gambling” usually means a score of 8 or more on the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI), a nine-question screen used in national surveys. “Any risk” is the broadest. It counts anyone who reports even one symptom or harm from gambling.

How a survey is run also changes the result. Great Britain’s Gambling Commission found that people report more gambling problems when they answer online than when an interviewer asks the questions. That’s why Great Britain’s newer online survey shows higher rates than its older face-to-face surveys, and the two can’t be compared.

The US figures don’t come from a government study. The current national estimates come from the National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG), a nonprofit, and its NGAGE survey, conducted by Ipsos.

0.45% to 19.4%: Why Country Rates Can’t Be Ranked

Every country measures gambling problems its own way. Some count only probable disorders, while others include anyone at moderate risk. The table shows the latest official or national figure for each country and what it actually measures.

Most of the spread comes from what’s being counted. South Korea’s 5.1% adds moderate-risk gamblers to problem gamblers, while Great Britain and Japan report narrower measures. Australia’s 19.4% is still broader. Comparing these figures directly would rank countries by method, not by harm.

Trends within each country are more reliable, because each survey is compared with itself:

• Australia is rising fast. Risky gambling jumped from 13.7% in 2024 to 19.4% in 2025, even as overall participation slipped to 58.8%.
• Japan is flat. The rate was 1.6% in 2020 and 1.7% in 2023, using the same method both times.
• Singapore is stable. The rate was about 1.2% in 2020 and 1.1% in 2023, while gambling participation fell to 40%, the lowest since surveys began in 2005.
• South Korea dipped slightly. Its rate was down 0.4 percentage points from 2022.
• Macau keeps falling. Possible gambling disorder dropped from 2.5% in 2016 to 0.8% in 2019 and 0.45% in 2022. Over the same period, the share of residents who gambled fell to 30.1%.
• Hong Kong fell sharply. The rate dropped from 1.4% in 2016 to 0.45% in 2021. That’s still the latest government study, and its data was collected while pandemic restrictions were in place.

The Philippines has no national majority survey. Its only national figure counts active players on licensed online platforms, not people with a gambling problem.

Young Adults and Men Carry the Most Risk

Across countries and measures, the same groups tend to come out on top: young adults, and men in particular. Our male vs female gambling statistics break the gender gap down further.

Worldwide, men are 3.4 times more likely than women to have a gambling problem. That’s the finding of a review of 21 studies from 18 countries. However, the gap is smaller in North America.

The age gap is even bigger. In the United States, 15% of adults aged 18 to 34 showed signs of problem gambling, whereas just 2% of adults 55 and older did. In Great Britain, about 1 in 10 gamblers aged 18 to 24 had a gambling problem, compared with fewer than 1 in 100 gamblers aged 75 and older. In Australia, young adults who gamble regularly were nearly twice as likely as older adults to be at high risk of harm. Across countries, young adults are about 1.5 times more likely than middle-aged adults to have a gambling problem.

The people asking for help are young too. In 2025, nearly half (49.48%) of contacts to the US National Problem Gambling Helpline came from people aged 18 to 34. About 70% were men.

Money also plays a part. In England, 4.5% of adults in the poorest areas had a gambling problem, whereas only 1.2% in the richest areas did. In Australia, people harmed by gambling, their own or someone else’s, were more likely to be young, unemployed, on lower incomes or raising children.

Online Casinos, Slots and Sports Betting Carry the Most Risk

Not all gambling carries the same risk. The World Health Organization says gambling machines and casino games are often linked to the most harm, whether they’re played in a venue or online.

The Lancet Public Health Commission put numbers on it. Among adults who gamble on online casinos or slots, 15.8% have a gambling disorder. For teenagers who use the same products, it’s 26.4%. Sports betting comes next: 8.9% of adults and 16.3% of teenagers who bet on sports have a gambling disorder.

Online gambling is growing fast. In the United States, the share of adults who gambled online rose from 15% in 2018 to 22% in 2024. In Australia, more than half (56.1%) of people who gambled in the past year did most of it online. Those online gamblers were more likely to be men, younger, and dealing with psychological distress. US helpline calls show the same shift. In 2025, 31.36% of contacts named online or app-based gambling as their main problem, up from 23% the year before. Slot machines, however, fell from 36% to 31% of contacts.

Sports betting carries its own risks. In the US, 24% of fantasy sports bettors and 17% of traditional sports bettors reported problem gambling behaviors. Parlays, which combine several bets into one, have also grown in popularity. The share of sports bettors placing them rose from 17% in 2018 to 30% in 2024.

Great Britain’s survey shows how wide the gap between products can be. Compared with gamblers overall, problem gambling was at least five times more common among people who played casino games, online slots or online bingo, or bet on football pools. Among people who bet in person on non-sports events, such as elections or TV shows, it was ten times more common.

South Korea’s national survey compares products directly. It measures the share of each product’s users who show moderate-risk or problem gambling.

These are rates among each product’s users, not all Korean adults. Still, the pattern matches other countries: casinos and racing sit at the top, whereas the lottery sits at the bottom.

Japan shows the same pattern with its own local machines. Among people suspected of having a gambling problem, 46.5% spent the most money on pachinko and 23.3% on pachislot, a slot-style version. Only 9.3% spent the most on horse racing, and 3.9% on the lottery.

Most of the Money Comes From People Already in Trouble

The WHO estimates that people gambling at harmful levels generate around 60% of all gambling losses. In other words, the industry’s biggest customers are often the people it harms most.

Australia shows the scale. Australians lost A$33.0 billion on gambling in 2024–25, or A$1,527.88 for every adult. New South Wales was highest at A$2,035.09 per adult. Poker machines alone took A$17.44 billion, more than half of all losses.

In the Philippines, the money moved online. The gaming industry earned ₱396.14 billion in 2025, and for the first time more than half of it (50.77%) came from online and electronic games. That changed quickly after e-wallets were cut off from gambling sites. In the second quarter of 2026, industry revenue fell 20.33% to ₱88.13 billion.

In the United States, researchers have tracked what happens to household finances after sports betting becomes legal. One study of credit records for about 4.38 million people found that credit scores dropped about 12 points in states that allowed online sports betting. In states that allowed only in-person betting, the drop was 0.7 points. Bankruptcy filings rose roughly 10% in online-betting states, or about nine more filings per 100,000 people. That works out to around 30,000 extra bankruptcies a year, and the rise began about two years after online betting launched.

A second study looked at savings. After online sports betting was legalized, household net investment fell by about 14%, or roughly $53 a quarter. Each $1 deposited into a betting account meant about $0.99 less invested. The effects were strongest among frequent bettors and households with little savings. Both studies measure average effects across each state’s population, not only among people who bet.

The people asking for help say the same. In 2025, 73.32% of contacts to the US National Problem Gambling Helpline cited financial struggles as a reason for reaching out, up from 66% the year before. In Great Britain, 6.4% of gamblers had cut spending on everyday items because of their gambling, and 5.8% had used savings or borrowed money to gamble. In Australia, 66% of high-risk gamblers reported financial stress.

Gambling Problems Rarely Come Alone

Most people with a gambling disorder also live with another mental health condition.

A 2025 review of population surveys found that 82.2% of people with a gambling disorder had at least one other mental disorder. The most common were substance use disorders (34.2%), mood disorders such as depression (30.9%) and anxiety disorders (29.9%). Personality disorders (14.3%) and psychotic disorders (5.9%) were less common. Overall, people with a gambling disorder were 10.7 times more likely to have a mental disorder than the general population.

Health records tell the same story. In Finland, 88.5% of people diagnosed with a gambling disorder had also been diagnosed with at least one other psychiatric condition. In Australia, 68% of high-risk gamblers reported a cognitive, behavioral or mental health condition, and people harmed by gambling were more likely to report high psychological distress and loneliness.

Suicide risk is higher too, though it’s often overstated. A 2025 review of 14 studies covering more than 500,000 people found that a gambling disorder raised the odds of suicidal thoughts by about 1.6 times and the odds of a suicide attempt by nearly 3 times. The odds of dying by suicide were about 8.5 times higher, although that figure comes from only two studies.

The largest single study followed 6,899 people diagnosed with a gambling disorder in Norway from 2008 to 2021. Suicide was their leading cause of death, accounting for 37 of 148 deaths (25%). Their suicide risk was about five times that of the general population. That’s similar to people with depression, anxiety or personality disorders, and lower than for people with psychotic, bipolar or substance use disorders.

In Sweden, 17.7% of people with a gambling disorder showed suicidal behavior during follow-up, compared with 1.6% of people without one. Across 107 studies, about 1 in 3 people with gambling problems had thought about suicide at some point in their lives, and 13.2% had attempted it.

Gambling can also be part of the story behind a suicide. In Victoria, Australia, 4.2% of suicides between 2009 and 2016 were linked to gambling. That covered 201 of 4,788 deaths, including people affected by someone else’s gambling. Similarly, in Great Britain, 4.6% of adults who had thought about or attempted suicide in the past year said it was related to their gambling. Men who gambled were more than twice as likely as women to make that link, at 9.9% compared with 4.2%.

Most People With Gambling Problems Don’t Get Help

A global review found that just 1 in 5 people with problem gambling had sought help, and only 1 in 25 people at moderate risk had. Across the whole adult population, the WHO estimates that only about 0.14% seek help for a current gambling problem.

Help-seeking rises as problems get worse, but it stays low. In Great Britain, 3.4% of people who gambled in the past year had sought support because of their gambling. That rose to 47.3% among people with a gambling problem, whereas only 0.8% of people with no gambling symptoms had sought support. Even at the most severe level, more than half had never asked for help.

Apart from that, attitudes are part of the problem. In the United States, 37% of people who gamble at risky levels believe recovery is unlikely, more than twice the rate among gamblers. Only 39% of Americans see gambling addiction as “very serious,” compared with 62% for drug addiction and 55% for alcoholism. Doctors rarely ask, either. Only 15% of US adults say a primary care provider has ever asked them about their gambling.

According to the WHO, the most effective options are long-term cognitive behavioral therapy and motivational interviewing.

More people are now reaching out through helplines and self-exclusion tools. If you need one now, our responsible gambling page lists free help by country. The US National Problem Gambling Helpline averaged more than 31,000 contacts a month in 2025. In the same year, GAMSTOP, Great Britain’s national online self-exclusion scheme, recorded 117,756 sign-ups. By the end of the year, 561,983 people were actively blocked from licensed online gambling sites. Young adults are driving much of this growth. Sign-ups among 16- to 24-year-olds increased 40% year on year in the second half of 2025, and overall registrations rose another 16% in the first half of 2026. Meanwhile, the Philippines opened its first round-the-clock problem gambling helpline on May 26, 2026.

Gambling Harm Doesn’t Stop With the Gambler

In Great Britain, 43.2% of adults said someone close to them gambles, even if only now and then. Among them, 4.8% had experienced at least one severe consequence from that person’s gambling. The most common was the breakdown of a relationship, reported by 3.3%.

Less severe harms are more widespread. Of the adults with someone close who gambles, 10.8% said it had caused them health problems such as stress or anxiety. Another 10.0% felt embarrassment, guilt or shame, and 8.7% had experienced conflict or arguments because of it.

In Australia, 5.9% of adults said they had been harmed by another person’s gambling in the past year. Gambling is also linked to violence at home. Among people whose partner gambled weekly or more, 19% had experienced intimate partner violence, whereas only 7% of those whose partner didn’t gamble had.

Even so, few affected family members ask for help. Only about 1 in 30 British adults with someone close to them who gambles had sought support because of that person’s gambling. In the United States, only about 4% of contacts to the National Problem Gambling Helpline in 2025 came from spouses and family members.

Numbers That Don’t Survive Checking

Many gambling addiction figures online are out of date, missing a source, or quoted out of context. These are the most common ones.

• “People with a gambling addiction are 15 times more likely to die by suicide.” This comes from a 2018 Swedish study of 2,099 hospital patients diagnosed with pathological gambling, and the WHO’s fact sheet still repeats it. Hospital patients tend to be the most severe cases, often with other serious conditions. Newer and larger studies put the risk at about five times that of the general population.
• “32 million Filipinos gamble online.” This number was raised at a Senate hearing in August 2025, but it counts registered accounts, not people. One person can hold several accounts. PAGCOR’s chairman said about 10 million are active players.
• “2 million Americans are addicted to gambling.” This is an older estimate from the National Council on Problem Gambling, often paired with “4 to 6 million” mild or moderate cases. NCPG’s current figures are 2.5 million and 5 to 8 million.
• “66% of young Filipinos gamble online.” This figure is widely credited to a 2023 survey by Capstone-Intel. No published report, sample size or method could be found, only news articles repeating the number.
• “About 12% of Russians are addicted to gambling.” This figure, roughly 13 million people, came from a State Duma committee. Even Russian media noted that the basis for the estimate wasn’t stated. Applying the WHO’s 1.2% global rate would give at most about 1.5 million.
• “3.6% of Japanese adults are gambling addicts.” This is from a 2017 government survey, but it measured lifetime gambling problems. The same survey put past-year problems at 0.8%. An even older 2013 figure, 4.8%, also still circulates. Japan’s 2023 national survey found 1.7%.
• “Legal sports betting raised bankruptcies by 25% to 30%.” This came from an early draft of a UCLA-led study. The published version reports a rise of roughly 10% in states with online sports betting.

A gambling addiction figure without a year, a source or a clear definition is likely out of date or misread.

What Nobody Publishes

Some of the figures have never been published. These are the gaps in places where gambling is legal and widely available.

• Problem gambling in the Philippines. No national survey has measured how many Filipinos have a gambling problem. The only national figure counts active players on licensed platforms. The new National Problem Gambling Helpline also hasn’t published how many calls it has received since it opened in May 2026.
• A national figure for India. India allows lotteries in several states, as well as horse racing and casinos in Goa and Sikkim, but no national prevalence survey could be found. The best data come from single-state studies. The largest surveyed 5,580 college students in Kerala and found 7.4% had a gambling problem, a figure that can’t be applied to the whole country.
• Gambling problems across Africa. Sports betting is licensed and booming in countries such as Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda, but no recent national prevalence surveys could be found for them. What exists are betting participation polls. One 2024 mobile survey of 3,070 young people in six African countries found that 76.16% had placed a bet, but it didn’t measure problem gambling.
• Central Asia, the Pacific Islands and the Caribbean. The Lancet’s global review of gambling surveys found no data from these regions. Kazakhstan only published its first nationally representative gambling survey in 2025.
• A standard global measure. Countries use different screening tools, so there’s no single global count of gambling disorders. The WHO says standardized global estimates have been limited. It’s working on new diagnostic tools that better reflect populations outside North America.

How to Check It Yourself

Every figure on this page can be checked at its source. Survey reports are updated yearly, so newer editions may show different numbers.

1. Great Britain’s 2.4%. Open the Gambling Commission’s Gambling Survey for Great Britain Annual Report 2025 and go to the “Consequences from gambling” section. The problem gambling figures are near the top, and data tables D.1 to D.10 have the breakdowns by age, sex and area.
2. Australia’s A$33.0 billion. Open the Queensland Government Statistician’s Office’s Australian Gambling Statistics, 41st edition, summary tables PDF. Total losses are in Summary Table D, and losses per person are in Table E.
3. Australia’s 19.4%. Download the ANU report Gambling participation in Australia 2025. The figure and its 2024 comparison are in the abstract.
4. The US survey figures. NCPG’s NGAGE 3.0 press release lists the key findings. The full methodology is at NCPGsurvey.org.
5. Philippine revenue. PAGCOR posts every quarterly and annual gross gaming revenue release in the News Archive on pagcor.ph.
6. South Korea’s product rates. Find the 2024 사행산업 이용실태조사 (2024 Survey of Gambling Industry Use) in the National Gambling Control Commission’s data library at ngcc.go.kr. The rates by product are in the section on prevalence by gambling activity.
7. The suicide figures. Read the abstract of the Norwegian study in The Lancet Regional Health – Europe. The 25% share of deaths and the roughly five-times risk are both in its findings.
8. The bankruptcy figure. Open the UCLA Anderson PDF of The Financial Consequences of Legalized Sports Gambling and search for “10% increase.”

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Sources

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