EGBA Annual Report Reveals Key Gambling Behavioral Trends

The European Gaming and Betting Association released its 2026 Annual Activity Report, highlighting the key points of 2025, from responsible gambling initiatives to iGaming market growth. Starting with the figures, 2025 marked a strong year on year for Gross Gaming Revenue, with the EGBA members reporting 18 billion, a 34% increase on the 2024 €13.5 billion figure. As a trade association that represents over 300 licenses across 20+ European countries, this suggests positive upward momentum for the European regulators, and the positives did not stop there.

For then the report touched on the approval of the European Standard on Markers of Harm, the launch of the safergambling.eu responsible gambling site, and the €3.8 billion in collective levies that its members paid in EU taxes. On the face of it, this report had little to excite the average European online casino or betting site user. But within the details, we found important trends and hints at future regulatory notions that could make important changes to the iGaming environment that European players have gotten accustomed to.

Who are the EGBA

The EGBA released its 2026 annual report, summarizing market growth, player protection measures, and key sustainability efforts by its members. For those who don’t know what EGBA is, this is not a regulatory body nor a gaming operator, but a trade association that represents many of the leading operators and iGaming parent companies in Europe. EGBA represents the following EU gambling firms:

• bet365
• betsson group (Betsafe, Betsson, NordicBet, and more)
• Entain (Coral, bwin, Ladbrokes, Sportingbet, and more)
• Evoke (888casino, Mr Green, and William Hill – though Evoke is in takeover talks with Bally’s Intralot)
• Flutter (FanDuel, Paddy Power, Sky Bet, Betfair, Pokerstars, and more)
• LeoVegas
• Superbet
• FDJ United
• Tipco (just joined in 2025)

Tipico, one of Central Europe’s biggest sports betting companies, joined the EGBA in 2025. The company was recently acquired by Banijay,  a French-based international TV production company, which created a Banijay Gaming division and is currently in talks to acquire JOA Groupe, an important company in the French landbased casino sector.

Collectively, the trade association has 400+ online gambling licenses in 22 EU countries, and together it makes up around 30% of Europe’s online gambling gross revenue. Needless to say, these are all regulated parties and so the EGBA carries significant political influence in the European iGaming sector.

Main Points of the Annual Report

As a trade association, the main goals of the EGBA are to enhance the standards of player protection, keep a competitive market, and defend the interests of its members, much of that being done by cooperating with the regulators to battle the illegal market, and standing up against them when proposed legislation seems to infringe on the members’ market competitiveness and business directly.

Key Annual Report Topics:

• Safer gambling standards and schemes
• Market growth and iGaming patterns

Markers of Harm and RG Initiatives

The biggest win was the approval of the EGBA’s own Markers of Harm standard. Proposed back in 2025, this is a voluntary setup that helps operators locate risky patterns or compulsive betting behaviors in players. It is not designed to label players as problem gamblers or addicts, but instead to understand better how addiction works, and potentially help players who are developing worrying habits. The EGBA highlighted the key points:

• Betting frequency/stake size: Sudden increases or volatile spikes in money spent
• Deposit frequency: Repeated deposits in shorter time frames
• Session length: Playing through the night or skipping regular breaks
• Player loss patterns: Chasing losses or making deposits right after big losses
• Responsible gambling prompt efficiency: How players react to this, and whether there is reduced interaction with them

Markers of Harm vs UK Affordability Checks

It is a stark contrast from the conventional ways that regulators demand operators approach the subject. Take the UK’s enhanced player protection protocols of 2025, specifically, the Financial Vulnerability Checks (Launched Feb 2025) and the Financial Risk Assessments (Launched July 7 rollout phase after 2024-25 pilot phase). The Financial Vulnerability Checks monitor player activity and flag up when a player exceeds £150 in net deposits over 30 days – an intentionally low figure to catch more players for deeper monitoring.

The Financial Risk Assessments have higher thresholds (£1,000 in losses over 24 hours, or £2,000 in losses over 90 days). The low risk customers will be monitored more extensively, while medium risk players will get deposit limits, stake caps and restricted access to promotions.

Any customers deemed at a higher risk have to be investigated more thoroughly, with checks made by third party credit auditors, looking into bankruptcy records, defaults on loans, debt management plans and any other publicly available credit/financial stress signals. The FRA has been challenged by insiders, including operators and partners. Many consider these to be counterproductive to the UKGC regulated gambling market.

YoY Market Growth and Sustainability

The responsible gambling initiatives can make direct impacts on the environment for players at the EGBA-affiliated gambling sites. But the market growth figures have pointed out key trends in player behaviors. The EGBA celebrated a fifth consecutive year of market growth in 2025, topping 2024’s €13.5 billion GGR with a record shattering €18 billion GGR. Now it is important to note that the EGBA does not represent all of Europe’s iGaming volume, and while it does have some of the biggest players, this is not the entire figure for Europe. And another explanation for the big growth is the addition of Tipico, one of the largest betting sites in Central Europe.

But the next tables showed something a lot more interesting for players. The Customer Stakes figure and the Average Stake size indicated that players staked far more bets in 2025 and than 2024, and the average stake size has continued to decrease.

The total number of stakes rose from 177.7 billion to 248.7 billion, and the average stake size dropped from €1.21 to €1.11. This is not a new trend; in fact, in the past 5 annual reports, there was only 1 year (2023) when the stake size increased a little, and otherwise it has steadily been dropping. It was €1.81 back in 2021, representing a drop of around 38.3% in just 5 years.

• Total Stakes/Average Stake in 2021: 111.6bn / €1.8
• Total Stakes/Average Stake in 2022: 132.5bn / €1.4
• Total Stakes/Average Stake in 2023: 135.7bn / €1.43
• Total Stakes/Average Stake in 2024: 177.7bn / €1.21
• Total Stakes/Average Stake in 2025: 248.7bn / €1.11

Another figure in decline is the aggregate for Return to Player across these EU regulators. in 2021, the average RTP was 94.3%, and this has steadily dropped each year:

• RTP in 2021: 94.3%
• RTP in 2022: 94.2%
• RTP in 2023: 94%
• RTP in 2024: 93.7%
• RTP in 2025: 93.4%

What we are seeing here is the impact of tightening player regulations at work, and how ever increasing taxes play an impact on the product that players get at these sites. Deposit limits, fixed maximum stakes, and ever lower thresholds for player financial checks are driving players to spend less on each bet, but the market is growing. Sure, there are more active accounts and the EGBA has gained more members to pump up the growth figures, but in general, there is a trend towards higher frequency but lower value in bet spending.

Higher taxes on operators, increasing licensing and compliance fees, and stricter licensing frameworks (like the trend of reducing licenses to  1 brand per license), are cutting into operator profit margins. And in most cases, the operators cannot soak up these financial burdens alone, so it results in scaling back on bonuses and then potentially cutting RTP to offset the compliance costs. While the RTP decline is slow, right now it has reduced by 1.1% over the past 5 years; this is a trend that most players won’t like to see. But unfortunately, it is the price of doing business in these increasingly costly and overregulated markets, something that operators are trying to offset without losing their customer base.

Next Steps in Europe

Ultimately, the EGBA annual report has given strong insight into how recent legislative changes and operational structures have changed in 2025, and the report for 2026 (which will come out this time next year), will most likely solidify those trends and changes. Look at Europe, and how regulators are continuously battling the black market, whilst tightening the conditions for both players and operators in the regulated markets. The continuing threat of prediction markets in Europe is also weighing heavily on operators and regulators.

Many, like most recently Spain, have blocked prediction markets until they can work out how these can operate in a regulated market, if at all. Others, like France and Belgium, have banned these sites. Others, like Malta and Gibraltar, have actively taken an interest in prediction markets, with Gibraltar licensing Europe’s first prediction market and paving the way for regulated real world event trading.

Going forward, the impact that the EGBA, and other iGaming trade associations will most likely play an even more important role in mediating the legal space between authorities and operators, while looking out for player interests and try to fend them away from the rising European black market.