A Review of Sports Wagering: Prevalence, Characteristics of Sports Bettors, and Association with Problem Gambling (original) (raw)
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Assessing the Playing Field: A Prospective Longitudinal Study of Internet Sports Gambling Behavior
Journal of Gambling Studies, 2007
Internet gambling is growing rapidly, as is concern about its possible effect on the public's health. This paper reports the results of the first prospective longitudinal study of actual Internet sports gambling behavior during eight study months. Data include recorded fixed-odds bets on the outcome of sporting contests and live-action bets on the outcome of events within contests for 40,499 Internet sports gambling service subscribers who enrolled during February 2005. We tracked the following primary gambling behaviors: daily totals of the number of bets made, money bet, and money won. We transformed these variables into measures of gambling involvement. We analyzed behavior for both fixed-odds and live-action bets. The median betting behavior of the 39,719 fixed-odds bettors was to place 2.5 bets of €4 (approximately $5.3 US) every fourth day during the median 4 months from first to last bet. This typical pattern incurred a loss of 29% of the amount wagered. The median betting behavior of the 24,794 live-action bettors was to place 2.8 wagers of €4 every fourth day during the median duration of 6 weeks at a loss of 18% of the amount wagered. We also examined the behavior of empirically determined groups of heavily involved bettors whose activity exceeded that of 99% of the sample.
Current Addiction in Youth: Online Sports Betting
Frontiers in Psychiatry
Background: Gambling landscape has changed in recent years with the emergence of online gambling (OG). Greater accessibility and availability of this betting modality can increase the risk of developing a gambling disorder (GD). Online sports betting (OSB) is currently the most common type of OG, but little is known about the clinical characteristics of OSB compared to slot-machine (SM) gamblers, the most common offline gambling disorder.Methods: This was a prospective study conducted between October 2005 and September 2019, and included outpatients diagnosed with GD seen in a Pathological Gambling and Behavioral Addictions referral unit. Only patients with OSB and SM disorders were included. The main objective was to assess the clinical profile of OSB compared to SM gamblers, and to define clinical predictors for developing OSB gambling disorder. Logistic regression was performed to determine the effects of variables on the likelihood of this disorder.Results: Among 1,186 patients ...
Journal of Behavioral Addictions
Background and aimsSports betting has increased markedly in recent years, in part due to legislative changes and the introduction of novel forms of sports betting (e.g., in-play betting). Some evidence suggests that in-play betting is more harmful than other types of sports betting (i.e., traditional and single-event). However, existing research on in-play sports betting has been limited in scope. To address this gap, the present study examined the extent to which demographic, psychological, and gambling-related constructs (e.g., harms) are endorsed by in-play sports bettors relative to single-event and traditional sports bettors.MethodsSports bettors (N = 920) aged 18+ from Ontario, Canada completed an online survey containing self-report measures of demographic, psychological, and gambling-related variables. Participants were classified as either in-play (n = 223), single-event (n = 533), or traditional bettors (n = 164) based on their sports betting engagement.ResultsIn-play spor...
Demographic, Behavioural and Normative Risk Factors for Gambling Problems Amongst Sports Bettors
Journal of gambling studies / co-sponsored by the National Council on Problem Gambling and Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, 2015
Sports betting is growing exponentially, is heavily marketed and successfully targets young adult males. Associated gambling problems are increasing. Therefore, understanding risk factors for problem gambling amongst sports bettors is an increasingly important area of research to inform the appropriate design and targeting of public health and treatment interventions. This study aimed to identify demographic, behavioural and normative risk factors for gambling problems amongst sports bettors. An online survey of 639 Australian sports bettors using online, telephone and retail betting channels was conducted. Results indicated that vulnerable sports bettors for higher risk gambling are those who are young, male, single, educated, and employed full-time or a full-time student. Risk of problem gambling was also found to increase with greater frequency and expenditure on sports betting, greater diversity of gambling involvement, and with more impulsive responses to betting opportunities,...
With the adoption and popularization of internet-based platforms, sports betting has introduced new functionalities that transform the design of its products and therefore the way bettors interact with them. This study aims to explore the association between the use of new structural characteristics of online betting and gambling severity. Five characteristics are examined here: (i) live in-play betting; (ii) cash out feature use (as example of in-play betting in-built features); (iii) fantasy sports gaming; (iv) location of betting; and (v) device or platform used to make bets. A cohort (N = 659) of Spanish gamblers who had bet on sports during the previous year was recruited through an online survey. The results suggested that those bettors scoring higher on gambling problems also utilized more often such new structural characteristics , in a proportion not explained only by their higher overall gambling activity. Mobile betting was especially frequent among problem gamblers.
Technology has changed the nature of gambling practices over the last decade and is continuing to do so. The online sports betting industry has become a rapidly growing sector of the global economy, with online sports betting contributing 37% of the annual online gambling market in Europe. There has been an integration of social and technological processes that has enabled the cultural saliency of contemporary online betting. One of the more newly introduced forms of online sports betting is in-play sports betting behaviour (the betting on events within a sporting event such as football and cricket). In-play sports betting features (such as 'cash out') are increasing in popularity amongst online gambling operators. A scoping study was carried out examining the evolution of this new form of gambling practice which included both a systematic literature review and the examination of 338 online gambling websites that offered sports betting. The present study identified a comprehensive list of what in-play betting features are currently being offered on online gambling websites as well as other information concerning in-play sports betting. A total of 16 academic papers and two 'grey literature' reports and were identified in the systematic review. Out of 338 online gambling websites that were visited, 26% of these offered at least on in-play betting feature. Results from the systematic review suggest that in-play sports betting has the potential to be more harmful than other ways of gambling because of the inherent structural characteristics.
Identifying behavioral markers of disordered Internet sports gambling
Addiction Research & Theory, 2011
Objective: To identify patterns of sports gambling that discriminate sports bettors with self-reported gambling-related problems from sports bettors 15 without such difficulties. Methods: Secondary data analysis of the actual betting behavior observed during the first 2 years of a longitudinal study of 47,134 subscribers to an Internet sports gambling site. This sample included 20 the gambling behavior of 679 bettors who self-reported the reason for closing their accounts during that period. We contrasted the behavior of those who closed their accounts because of gambling-related problems (n ¼ 215%, 32%) to the 25 behavior of other account closers (ACs) who were either not satisfied with the service (n ¼ 113%, 17%) or no longer interested in betting (n ¼ 351%, 52%). Results: Exploratory multivariate discriminant function analyses identified a sub-group of 30 approximately half the ACs with gambling-related problems who exhibited a homogeneous and distinct pattern of sports-betting behavior. Compared to other ACs, this sub-group made more and larger bets, bet more frequently, and were more likely to 35 exhibit intense betting soon after enrollment. The group estimation formula derived from this prototype applied to an independent sample of ACs confirmed the prevalence of this distinct gambling pattern.
Sports gambling among youths The role of demographic factors and prevalence
Shodh Sari- An International Multidisciplinary Journal, 2023
Sports’ betting is the most popular form of gambling among youths and it has strong appeal across classes, gender, sexuality, races and other social categorization. This study, therefore examined sports betting prevalence and it relationship with demographic variables of gender, age, education level and income level among youths in Ilorin, Kwara State, North Central, Nigeria. Cross-sectional survey research design was adopted for the research; the population of the study was all 339,225 youths from the three local government area of Ilorin, Kwara State. Multistage random sampling technique was used to select 470 youths. The instrument for data collection was a researcher-designed questionnaire, validated by experts and the reliability coefficient was .70. Frequency and percentage was used for answering the research questions, while logistic regression was used to test the null hypotheses at .05 level of significance. The findings of the study indicated that higher proportion of youths with monthly income (69.5%) reported engaging in sports betting, likewise, higher proportion of youths with no formal education (69.2%) reported engaging in sports betting more than other categories and there was high proportion of youths (58.7%) that engage in sports betting. Furthermore, the demographic factors of age (OR = 1.67; p = .12), education (OR = 0.37; p = .23), and monthly income (OR = 1.22; p = .51) were not significantly associated with sports betting among youths, since the p-value is greater than .05 level of significance. It was concluded that monthly income was not a predictor of sports betting among youths. Furthermore, age and education level were not significant predictor of sports betting among youths. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that public health educators should embark on an informative campaign to reduce the degree to which youths overrate sports betting as an avenue for money making.
Journal of Gambling Studies
Research on esports activity usually captures it from the perspective of involvement in gaming. This study presents the results of the first research in Poland (N = 438) on esports betting (ESB). ESB is compared to other forms of e-gambling and involvement in pay-to-win games. The aim was to build a predictive model of gambling disorder among people betting on esports. A predictive model of gambling disorder based on ordinal regression was built, including sociodemographic variables, involvement in esports betting, involvement in other Internet activities connected to ESB, as well as psychological variables—motivation to gamble and coping strategies. The results showed that gambling disorder among esports bettors is associated with time spent on one game session, placing other forms of online gambling bets once a week or more often, and paying in pay-to-win games. Gambling disorder was also predicted by escape coping strategies and lower engaged strategies as well as financial and c...