CMC Markets generated over £27.4 million in revenue from spread betting activities in the financial year ending 31 March 2025. The figure, however, dropped about 4.2 per cent from the previous year’s £28.7 million.

The revenue decline also affected the profits of CMC Markets’ unit that offers spread betting, which came in at £2.8 million, a 9.7 per cent annual decline.

A Popular Instrument in the UK

Spread betting, as its name implies, allows someone to bet on outcomes in the financial markets. These are derivative instruments, and traders can take positions both for and against the markets.

These instruments are very popular in the United Kingdom, as the profits generated by trading them are not taxed. Several retail UK brokers, including IG, CMC Markets, Spreadex, and Trade.com, offer spread betting instruments.

Peter Cruddas, CMC Markets Chief Executive and Founder, Source: CMC
Lord Peter Cruddas, CMC Markets Chief Executive and Founder, Source: CMC

CMC Markets recently revealed that its net operating income for the last fiscal year was £340.1 million. Although the group report did not specify the spread betting figures, the latest Companies House filings by the entity offering spread betting revealed that almost 8 per cent of the total revenue came from these instruments, which are geographically diverse.

The entity also earned £2.8 million from interest on client funds and another £776,000 from interest on its own funds.

Impact of the CrowdStrike Outage

The filing further revealed that the CMC Markets technology infrastructure was hit by the CrowdStrike outage in July 2024, which impacted companies worldwide, including many in the CFDs industry. However, the impact on the CMC app due to the outage was insignificant – the CMC app achieved 99.92 per cent uptime in FY25 compared to 99.95 per cent in the previous year.

Read more: Global IT Outage Hits FX and CFDs

FinanceMagnates.com earlier reported that the number of leveraged traders who trade margin forex, CFDs, and financial spread betting in the United Kingdom went down to 173,000 at the end of May 2024, a decline of 5 per cent over the previous 12 months. The figure has been declining since May 2021, when the number of active leveraged traders hit 275,000.