The City of Newcastle is a vibrant, historical place with one of the greatest football team fan bases in the world. There’s a sense of pride that reverberates around the city, with Geordies tapping into their heritage and being well-known for their down-to-earth, welcoming friendliness.
Tyneside is also famous for being a place with an abundance of nightlife and threaded through that are casinos. With popular gambling halls filled with classic table games like roulette and blackjack littered throughout the city, casinos are a big part of the social scene in Newcastle. But why are Geordies more likely to lean on slots than table games?
A preference for slots could lie in the working-class roots of Newcastle. The growth of Newcastle was fuelled by the coal industry before shipbuilding and engineering took off in the region during the Industrial Revolution. Geordies are extremely proud of that heritage, and therefore the popularity of slots in the region could tie into that history because of pubs, which are typical working-class haunts.
One-armed bandits have always been a popular feature of the drinking scene, so are something that’s always been associated with nightlife and relaxation in the region. They are a very familiar game format that more people will simply be familiar with than something like baccarat, for example.
Swinging back around to the social aspect at brick-and-mortar casinos, table games provide an element of it, but the atmosphere at them is typically a lot more serious than in the slots area. That’s down to a lot more concentration being required in games of skill like poker.
A bunch of friends gathered for a night out is more likely to hang around slots, where they can engage with each other and be as loud and have as much fun as they want. Because they are less serious than table games, slots just tie in with a more relaxed socially interactive vibe.
Even though that social aspect of it is missing when playing slots at online casinos, that familiarity with the game format still translates over to the digital world, and keeps them hugely popular.
Thanks to a huge number of online casinos doing the circuit now, Geordies don’t even have to leave home to brave cold Tyneside nights to get access to the slots. Online casino slots offer that punch of convenience through easy access.
While they encompass the full gamut of gaming options, the visibility of slots at online casinos is notable as they are the main game format promoted on them. In contrast, it’s very rare to see table games strongly promoted on the front pages of gambling sites.
Some platforms boast more than 1000 slots across a broad range of themes and mechanics, which naturally helps to drive people towards them. On the flip side, however, they are front and centre initially only because they are more popular than table games.
A reason why slots may be popular with Geordies is that they tend to be high-energy and engaging. That entertaining aspect can be extremely eye-catching on a night out, because slots are designed to be visually stimulating.
Walk into a casino and they are the first games that greet you, and that’s because they are easy to play. Slots don’t require any kind of special skills or knowledge, as they are all balanced for fairness through Random Number Generators. That also makes them unpredictable and some of the highest-risk gambling options going, but again that plays into the less-serious nature of slots.
While most people understand that a major payout isn’t viable from slots, at least the potential of one is another major element to why slots remain popular to gamblers on Tyneside. The potential of hitting something big with no skill involved sounds ideal, even if in reality, the actual chance of landing a jackpot win is minuscule.
There’s no other type of casino game that gives players a shot at a jackpot from as low of a stake, either. Higher stakes would be needed at table games like blackjack and baccarat to secure significant returns anywhere near the thousands and hundreds of thousands of pounds that jackpot wins can get up to. Even an extremely lucky straight-up roulette payout at 35:1 is still going to require a large wager to get back what a slot can pay out.
According to the Gambling Commission, the slots industry in the UK was reported to have accounted for three-quarters of the overall remote gambling Gross Gaming Yield (GGY) in 2024. So, Newcastle alone isn’t the only hotbed where slots are preferred over other casino classics, as millions of people across the length and breadth of the UK, from Glasgow to Liverpool and London enjoy them.