Learning, yearning, but not earning: A brief look at student gambling

Last week, the UK Gambling Commission put out a press release relating to student gambling. Having been in the university sector for as long as I have been researching gambling (i.e., 30 years), student gambling is an area that has always been close to my professional heart. I have published dozens of papers on youth gambling and student gambling over the last three decades (see ‘Further reading’ below for a few examples).

With my daughter leaving home to go to university this week there are lots I could potentially worry about and gambling isn’t necessarily my main concern where my daughter is concerned, but gambling is still of concern to me especially because a study I published back in 2012 with Luke Benson and Dr. Christine Norman (in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction) found that first year university students gambled more than final year students and were more susceptible to problem gambling compared to final year students.

The Gambling Commission have just published their own research into the topic. They hired Youth Sight who conducted 1,000 online interviews with undergraduate students in August 2017 (the students were part of an online panel recruited from applicants through Universities and Colleges Admission Service). The quotas chosen reflected the UK student population in terms of gender, course year and university group. Here are some of their key findings:

• Two-thirds of students had gambled in the previous month
• Over half of student gamblers (54%) engaged in gambling to make money
• Two-fifths of students said they felt guilty after they had gambled
• One in eight student gamblers had missed lectures due to gambling
• One in four student gamblers (25%) had spent more money gambling than they could afford
• One in 25 student gamblers (4%) were in debt because of their gambling
• One in four students that had a gambling debt, had a debt of over £10,000

The Gambling Commission noted there were are number of limitations with the study. They specifically noted that gambling participation rates may have been higher than if the data had been collected using other methodologies (telephone, face-to-face interviews) due to the self-selecting nature of online surveys. However, online surveys were chosen due to students’ access to technology and the availability of a representative panel via this method. 

On the back of their survey, the Gambling Commission also provided their top ten tips to help students avoid getting into trouble with gambling. I have reproduced them here verbatim.

• Ask yourself why you are gambling: Are you gambling to escape debt or as a way to make quick money? Think carefully about your motivations to gamble. Gambling shouldn’t be seen as the answer to improving your personal finances. If you have concerns about money, speak to a financial adviser or student support services.
• Monitor how often you’re gambling online: Websites must give you access to historic account activity. This means you can see exactly when, how much and what you’ve been gambling on over time and make well-informed choices about what to do next.
• Keep track of how much time you’ve spent gambling: With a reality check, you can set alerts to pop up on screen, which help you to monitor the time spent gambling either online or on gaming machines in a betting shop.
• Limit how much you can spend: If you’re concerned about how much money you’re gambling, you can set a limit on how much you spend across individual gambling products online. You can also set a limit on how much you spend on gaming machines in a betting shop.
• Give yourself a timeout: During a timeout, you can block yourself from gambling online for a set amount of time, of up to 6 weeks, and even bar yourself from gambling during a specific time of day.
• Need a longer break? Self-exclude from gambling firms for a minimum of 6 months: If you think you are spending too much time or money gambling – whether online or in gambling premises – you can ask to be self-excluded. This is when you ask the company to stop you from gambling with them for a period of time. The exclusion will last for a minimum of least six months. Self-exclusion can be used if you think you have a problem with gambling and want help to stop. [The Gambling Commission] are also working with industry representatives to develop a national online self-exclusion scheme.
• Read the terms and conditions: Did you know almost 80% of gamblers haven’t read the terms and conditions on the websites they are gambling on? By taking the time to read the T&Cs, you can ensure you understand exactly what you are gambling on, and what restrictions are attached to promotions and bonus offers (such as a minimum spend level before the bonus is paid) – this will help you make an informed decision.
• Make sure the website you’re gambling with is licensed: Make sure you’re gambling with a Gambling Commission licensed business. This means you’ll be protected by gambling and consumer protection rules in Great Britain. Licensed gambling businesses must display that they are licensed and provide a link to our licence register where you can see what type of activities they are allowed to offer and also if we have taken any regulatory action against them.
• Check how your money is protected: Any gambling business that holds customer funds must explain in their T&Cs how customer funds are protected if the business goes bust – this should help you decide who you want to gamble with.
• Feel it’s getting too much? Talk to someone: There are a number of gambling support groups available if you feel your gambling is getting out of control or too much. More information about the signs of problem gambling can be found on the Gambleaware and Gamcare websites [You can call the National Gambling Helpline on Freephone 0808 8020 133]. They also provide general information about gambling, including how to gamble safely and where to get help if you or someone you know has problems with their gambling.

Dr. Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Benson, L., Norman, C. & Griffiths, M.D. (2012). The role of impulsivity, sensation seeking, coping, and year of study in student gambling: A pilot study. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 10, 461-473.

Canale, N., Griffiths, M.D., Vieno, A., Siciliano, V. & Molinaro, S. (2016). Impact of internet gambling on problem gambling among adolescents in Italy: Findings from a large-scale nationally representative survey. Computers in Human Behavior, 57, 99-106.

Canale, N., Vieno, A., Lenzi, M., Griffiths, M.D., Borraccino, A., Lazzeri, G., Lemma, P., Scacchi, L., Santinello, M. (2017). Income inequality and adolescent gambling severity: Findings from a large-scale Italian representative survey. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1318. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01318

Gambling Commision (2017). Commission raises awareness of potential risks for students who gamble. September 12. Located at: http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/news-action-and-statistics/news/2017/Commission-raises-awareness-of-potential-risks-for-students-who-gamble.aspx

Griffiths, M.D. (1995). Adolescent Gambling. London: Routledge.

Griffiths, M.D. (2002). Adolescent gambling: What should teachers and parents know? Education and Health, 20, 31-35.

Griffiths, M.D. (2002). Gambling and Gaming Addictions in Adolescence. Leicester: British Psychological Society/Blackwells.

Griffiths, M.D. (2008). Adolescent gambling in Great Britain. Education Today: Quarterly Journal of the College of Teachers. 58(1), 7-11.

Griffiths, M.D. (2013). Adolescent gambling via social networking sites: A brief overview. Education and Health, 31, 84-87.

Griffiths, M.D. (2015). Adolescent gambling and gambling-type games on social networking sites: Issues, concerns, and recommendations. Aloma: Revista de Psicologia, Ciències de l’Educació i de l’Esport, 33(2), 31-37.

Griffiths, M.D. & Calado, F. (2017). Adolescent gambling. Reference Module in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Psychology (pp. 1-12). Oxford: Elsevier.

Griffiths, M.D. & Linsey, A. (2006). Adolescent gambling: Still a cause for concern? Education and Health, 24, 9-11.

Griffiths, M.D. & Parke, J. (2010). Adolescent gambling on the Internet: A review. International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health, 22, 59-75.

Fanable Collector: A personal insight into the psychology of a record-collecting completist (Part 2)

In a previous blog I briefly outlined the mindset of being an excessive record collecting completist using myself as a case study. That particular article contained some of the extreme and excessive lengths I have gone through on a general level when it comes to collecting music by particular artists. What I thought I would do in this blog is write a brief but more detailed account of my most recent music completist (and some would argue obsessive) activity concerning the British rock band The Move who were active in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

I had liked The Move since my early teenage years after buying a 10-track cassette (The Greatest Hits Vol. 1) in my local Woolworths shop in my home town of Loughborough. The cassette was on the budget Pickwick record label and I bought it because it only cost 99p. (In fact, I bought dozens of budget albums at Woolworths in the early 1980s including many Pickwick compilation cassettes and many vinyl records on the MFP [Music for Pleasure] record label mainly because they were priced £1.99 or less and the same price as 12” singles at the time). I had only ever heard a few songs by The Move on BBC Radio 1 (my preferred music station in my teenage years) including ‘Flowers In The Rain’, ‘Fire Brigade’, and ‘I Can Hear The Grass Grow’. Because the cassette featured all three of these songs I bought it on impulse and was not disappointed.

Over the years, the albums that I had on cassette and vinyl were slowly replaced by CDs but The Move’s greatest hits LP was one of the few that slipped through the cracks and which I never got on CD – until about a six weeks ago. As ever, the buying of the CD was an impulse purchase following a ‘You might like…’ recommendation from Amazon. I had just bought a couple of ‘glam rock’ CDs and (as Amazon always do) I got a personal recommendation that I might like The Move’s greatest hits CD because I had bought greatest hits CDs by T-Rex and Slade.

The album that I was recommended was Magnetic Waves of Sound: The Best of The Move, a 21-track LP featuring all their singles and released earlier this year (“magnetic waves of sound” is one of the lyrics from ‘I Can Hear The Grass Grow’ in case you were wondering). I bought it not only because it contained all the 10 tracks that were on my Pickwick label cassette that I bought in the early 1980s, but also because it had an accompanying DVD of many rare performances of The Move on TV from the late 1960s. I ordered the 2-disc set and as soon as it arrived I uploaded it onto my i-Pod and played it repeatedly for the next few days. In fact, I played it three or four times a day for the following week. I absolutely loved it – despite the mixture of different song styles from four different line-ups of the band during the 1967-1972 era.

I haven’t got time to go into the history of the band but most fans of the band tend to differentiate between the line-up featuring Carl Wayne as lead singer (with all the original songs being written by Roy Wood) and the later incarnation after Carl Wayne had left and was replaced by Jeff Lynne (who shared songwriting and lead vocal duties with Roy Wood). Roy Wood and drummer Bev Bevan were the only two in all the different line-ups over the years.

Within a few days of playing the CD, my thirst for The Move was unquenchable. After just four days listening to the ‘best of’ album on repeat, I ordered all four of The Move’s back catalogue studio LPs – Move (1968), Shazam (1970), Looking On (1970), and Message From The Country (1971). Not only were all four albums still available but all had recently been re-released in ‘deluxe’ and remastered editions with many extra discs’ worth of unreleased material including dozens of tracks from BBC radio sessions over the years. The four albums soon arrived and I had eight new discs of music to gorge myself on. They arrived just before I went on my family holiday to the Canary Islands so I had lots of time (without work) to listen to the music on the plane, by the pool, while I was reading, and in when going to bed (I always listen to a couple of LPs in bed every night before I go to sleep).

While I was on holiday I was reading lots of online articles about The Move while listening to their albums. It was at this point that I decided that I had to have every track they’ve ever recorded in my collection (irrespective of whether I like the songs or not). This is one of the worst things about being an avid collector and song completist. I simply have to have every note – good or bad – that has been recorded by the band (including live albums). I soon found out that The Move had only released two live albums (Something Else From The Move and Live At The Fillmore 1969) so I ordered those while I was on holiday (and they were waiting for me on my doormat when I arrived back home). Thankfully, both of these feature lots of songs that are not on any of their four albums and they also happened to be a great band when playing live (but I didn’t know that until after I’d ordered). There was also an LP of session tracks they recorded for the BBC (the unimaginatively titled BBC Sessions) but thankfully all of those tracks (and more) were included as extras on the deluxe editions of their studio LPs (which I already had). Good job too because it sells for hundreds of pounds on sites like Amazon and eBay.

Finally, there were two anthology box sets. The first one (Movements, issued in 1998) was a 3-disc set, but again, all the rare tracks on that set featured in the extras of the more recently remastered deluxe edition versions of their studio LPs (so I decided I didn’t need to get that). However, a more recent 4-disc box set (The Move Anthology 1966-1972, issued in 2008) had lots of tracks and alternate versions of songs that weren’t available anywhere else and exclusive to this particular CD boxset. I went online and found various online websites selling it secondhand for exorbitant prices (around £125; I’d managed to get all the other seven albums for around £80 in total). I would have gladly paid the price for such an overpriced item (and that is another downside of being a completist – we will pay over the odds to complete our collections – even if there is just one or two tracks that I don’t own), but thankfully I found a secondhand set on Discogs for just over £30. Bargain! I quickly ordered it (“only one copy left”) and had it in my possession within 36 hours of ordering. In the space of about three weeks I had completed my collection of everything The Move had legally and commercially produced.

But a completist collectors never end there. We then start to track down illegal bootlegs (typically online but also at various record fairs around the country). We seek out rarer and rarer items and build up a kind of tolerance that can never be totally satisfied until in the possession of new recorded material. I only managed to locate five bootlegs by The Move and there were no tracks on them that didn’t feature in the albums already owned (so I wasn’t tempted to buy any of them – other completists have to own all recorded output irrespective of whether they already have the tracks in question). I then went onto YouTube and found some rare live performances which I converted into MP3s to make my own unofficial rare bootleg LP collection of The Move live. But that still didn’t satisfy my thirst for material by The Move. I wanted more.

Much of the reading I did online about The Move during my summer holiday featured quite a lot on the 1970-1972 period (when Jeff Lynne joined) where there were actually two bands in operation simultaneously – The Move and the embryonic Electric Light Orchestra (ELO). As a child (11-12 years old) I loved E.L.O. and had bought their Discovery album on cassette because I loved the track ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’ (and still do to be honest). However, I never realized in my early teens that Jeff Lynne had been in the later line-ups of The Move. Given that the Electric Light Orchestra were actually The Move in all but name at the beginning of the 1970s, I also ended up buying a 2-CD collection called The Harvest Years (a new copy for just £6) featuring all of the tracks on the first two ELO albums (The Electric Light Orchestra and ELO 2) plus dozens of extra outtakes and b-sides. ELO’s mission statement was to produce ‘symphonic’ rock fusing elements of classical music and instrumentation (cellos, violins, etc.) into the rock genre. In fact, the only reason The Move still existed as a band was because they were contractually obligated by their record company to produce two more albums. In reality, Wood and Lynne’s only aim was to get ELO up and running and the first ELO album was recorded at the same time as the last album by The Move. ELO’s first hit single (‘10538 Overture’) was originally recorded as a Move b-side. The Move’s last top ten hit single (‘California Man’) crossed over with ELO’s first top ten hit single in the British charts and had identical core line-ups (Wood, Lynne and Bevan).

 

I then found out that Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood had been friends for years in Birmingham where they both lived and served their musical apprenticeships. In fact, The Move had recorded a demo version of ‘Blackberry Way’ (their only No.1 hit in the UK) in Lynne’s homemade studio while he was lead singer in his own band (The Idle Race). Roy Wood had also asked Lynne to join The Move in 1969 but Lynne felt he could still get somewhere with his own band. The Idle Race were also one of the first bands to perform a cover version of a song by The Move – ‘Here We Go Round The Lemon Tree’). This led me to buying a secondhand copy of the complete (2-CD) recorded works of everything by The Idle Race ever commercially released (Back To The Story) for just £5. Bargain!

But my thirst for Move-related music didn’t end there. I then found out that there were various tracks that Roy Wood had written during his tenure with The Move and Electric Light Orchestra (Mk.1) and that ended up on his subsequent LPs (most noticeably his Boulders album). I subsequently bought Boulders as part of a £10 Roy Wood 5-CD boxset also featuring LPs by his next band Wizzard as well as ELO’s first LP and The Move’s final LP (both of which I already had but £10 for three new albums seemed good value to me). I then bought a ‘greatest hits’ CD of Roy Wood and Wizzard (for a couple of quid).

As I write this, for the last two weeks, I’ve been slowly buying up the rest of ELO’s album back catalogue. For the best part of three decades, ELO were one of my guilty pleasures as I had quite a few of their late 1970s albums on my iPod (as well their Light Years greatest hits collection). I now have all the albums ELO recorded in the 1970s as well as the most recent (2015) platinum-selling Alone In The Universe. I managed to get all of these for less than £20 in total. Bargain! However, whether I will end up being an ELO completist remains to be seen. A lot of their post-1980 output is not something I can honestly say I like. But who knows? As I said above, one of the worst things about being a completist is buying music that we don’t like but collect just to complete our collections. With ELO, it’s definitely a case of ‘Watch this space’.

Dr. Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Brumbeat (2017). The Move. Located at: http://www.brumbeat.net/move.htm

Paytress, M. (2008). Liner notes in book included in the 4-CD The Move Anthology 1966-1972. Salvo/Fly Records.

Van der Kiste, J. (2014). Jeff Lynne: Electric Light Orchestra – Before and After. Stroud: Fonthill Media.

Van der Kiste, J. (2014). Roy Wood: The Move, Wizzard and Beyond. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

Wikipedia (2017). Carl Wayne. Located at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Wayne

Wikipedia (2017). Electric Light Orchestra. Located at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Light_Orchestra

Wikipedia (2017). Jeff Lynne. Located at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Lynne

Wikipedia (2017). Roy Wood. Located at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Wood

Wikipedia (2017). The Move. Located at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Move

Screenagers in love: Adolescent screen time, content, and context

In 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) advocated the ‘2×2’ screen time guidelines to parents that their children should be restricted to no more than 2 hours of screen time a day and that children under 2 years of age should not be exposed to any screen time at all. Not only is this unworkable in today’s multi-media world but the guidelines are not based on scientific evidence. Thankfully, the AAP have revised their guidelines in the light of how today’s children actually engage with screen-based interactive technologies. For me, the issue is not about the amount of screen time but is about the content and the context of screen use. I have three ‘screenagers’ (i.e., children often referred to as ‘digital natives’ who have never known a world without the internet, mobile phones and interactive television) who all – like me – spend a disproportionate amount of their everyday lives on front of a screen for both work/educational and leisure purposes. Engaging in a lot of screen-based activities is not inherently negative – it’s simply a case of doing things differently than we did 20 years ago.

One online activity that has received a lot of criticism in the media is the playing of online videogames. However there is now a wealth of research which shows that video games can be put to educational and therapeutic uses, as well as many studies which reveal how playing video games can improve reaction times and hand-eye co-ordination. Their interactivity can stimulate learning, allowing individuals to experience novelty, curiosity and challenge that stimulates learning. Although I have published many studies concerning online gaming addiction, there is little empirical evidence that moderate gaming has any negative effects whatsoever. In fact, many excessive players experience detrimental effects.

Over the past 15 years I have spent time researching the excessive playing of online videogames like Everquest and World of Warcraft (WoW). Online gaming involves multiple reinforcements in that different features might be differently rewarding to different people. In video games more generally, the rewards might be intrinsic (e.g. improving your highest score, beating your friend’s high score, getting your name on the “hall of fame”, mastering the game) or extrinsic (e.g. peer admiration).

In online gaming, there is no end to the game and there is the potential for gamers to play endlessly. This can be immensely rewarding and psychologically engrossing. For a small minority of people, this may lead to addiction where online gaming compromises everything else in their lives. However, playing excessively doesn’t necessarily make someone an addict. A few years ago in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, I published two case study accounts of two males who claimed that they were gaming for up to 80 hours a week. They were behaviourally identical in terms of their game playing, but very different in terms of their psychological motivation to play.

The first case was an unemployed single 21-year old male. His favourite online game was World of Warcraft and that since leaving university he had spent an average of 10 to 14 hours a day playing WoW. He claimed that WoW had a positive influence in his life and that most of his social life was online and that it increased his self-esteem. He also argued that he had no other commitments and that he had the time and the flexibility to play WoW for long stretches. Gaming provided a daily routine when there was little else going on. There were no negative detrimental effects in his life. When he got a job and a girlfriend, his playing all but stopped.

The second case was 38-year old male, a financial accountant, married and had two children. He told me that over the previous 18 months, his online playing of Everquest had gone from about 3-4 hours of playing every evening to playing up to 14 hours a day. He claimed that his relationship was breaking down, that he was spending little time with his children, and that he constantly rang in sick to work so that he could spend the day playing online games. He had tried to quit playing on a number of occasions but could not go more than a few days before he experienced “an irresistible urge” to play again – even when his wife threatened to leave him.

Giving up online gaming was worse than giving up smoking and that he was “extremely moody, anxious, depressed and irritable” if he was unable to play online. Things got even worse. He was fired from his job for being unreliable and unproductive (although his employers were totally unaware of his gaming behaviour). As a result of losing his job, his wife also left him. This led to him “playing all day, every day”. It was a vicious circle in that his excessive online gaming was causing all his problems yet the only way he felt he could alleviate his mood state and forget about all of life’s stresses was to play online games even more.

I argued that only the second man appeared to be genuinely addicted to online gaming but that the first man wasn’t. I based this on the context and consequences of his excessive play. Online gaming addiction should be characterized by the extent to which excessive gaming impacts negatively on other areas of the gamers’ lives rather than the amount of time spent playing. For me, an activity cannot be described as an addiction if there are few (or no) negative consequences in the player’s life even if the gamer is playing up to 14 hours a day. The difference between a healthy enthusiasm and an addiction is that healthy enthusiasms add to life, addictions take away from it.

Every week I receive emails from parents claiming that their sons are addicted to playing online games and that their daughters are addicted to social media. When I ask them why they think this is the case, they almost all reply “because they spend most of their leisure time in front of a screen”. This is simply a case of parents pathologising their children’s behaviour because they think what they are doing is “a waste of time”. I always ask parents the same three things in relation to their child’s screen use. Does it affect their schoolwork? Does it affect their physical education? Does it affect their peer development and interaction? Usually parents say that none of these things are affected so if that is the case, there is little to worry about when it comes to screen time. Parents also have to bear in mind that this is how today’s children live their lives. Parents need to realise that excessive screen time doesn’t always have negative consequences and that the content and context of their child’s screen use is more important than the amount of screen time.

(Please note: This article is an extended version of an article that was originally published by the London School of Economics’ Media Policy Project)

Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Griffiths, M.D. (2010). Online video gaming: What should educational psychologists know? Educational Psychology in Practice, 26(1), 35-40.

Griffiths, M.D. (2010). The role of context in online gaming excess and addiction: Some case study evidence. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 8, 119-125.

Griffiths, M.D. (2013). Adolescent gambling via social networking sites: A brief overview. Education and Health, 31, 84-87.

Griffiths, M.D. (2013) Social networking addiction: Emerging themes and issues. Journal of Addiction Research and Therapy, 4: e118. doi: 10.4172/2155-6105.1000e118.

Griffiths, M.D. (2014). Child and adolescent social gaming: What are the issues of concern? Education and Health, 32, 9-12.

Griffiths, M.D. (2014). Gaming addiction in adolescence (revisited). Education and Health, 32, 125-129.

Griffiths, M.D., Kuss, D.J. & King, D.L. (2012). Video game addiction: Past, present and future. Current Psychiatry Reviews, 8, 308-318.

Griffiths, M.D., Kuss, D.J. & Demetrovics, Z. (2014). Social networking addiction: An overview of preliminary findings. In K. Rosenberg & L. Feder (Eds.), Behavioral Addictions: Criteria, Evidence and Treatment (pp.119-141). New York: Elsevier.

Kuss, D.J. & Griffiths, M.D. (2011). Online social networking and addiction: A literature review of empirical research. International Journal of Environmental and Public Health, 8, 3528-3552.

Kuss, D.J. & Griffiths, M.D. (2012). Online gaming addiction in adolescence: A literature review of empirical research. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 1, 3-22.

Kuss, D.J. & Griffiths, M.D. (2012). Internet gaming addiction: A systematic review. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 10, 278-296.

Lopez-Fernandez, O., Honrubia-Serrano, M.L., Baguley, T. & Griffiths, M.D. (2014). Pathological video game playing in Spanish and British adolescents: Towards the Internet Gaming Disorder symptomatology. Computers in Human Behavior, 41, 304–312.

Pápay, O., Urbán, R., Griffiths, M.D., Nagygyörgy, K., Farkas, J. Kökönyei, G., Felvinczi, K., Oláh, A., Elekes, Z., Demetrovics, Z. (2013). Psychometric properties of the Problematic Online Gaming Questionnaire Short-Form (POGQ-SF) and prevalence of problematic online gaming in a national sample of adolescents. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 16, 340-348.

Teaming reign: A brief look at marketing convergence in online sports betting

The marketing cycle of a typical online betting firm aptly illustrates the converging nature of sports and its neighbouring industries. For instance, consider the following football narrative. A betting site buys advertisement space in a national newspaper. The online edition of that newspaper accompanies the advertisement with an active link. If a user clicks on it and access the betting site, the newspaper as an affiliate marketer will get 30% of the money that user has lost betting. In order to boost the number of users clicking on it, the paper publishes next to it a news article featuring Real Madrid on the eve of a match against Manchester United with the following headline: ‘Cristiano Ronaldo scored in 4 of his last 5 visits to Old Trafford’. Now, the journalist shares the link to that piece of news on Twitter, predicting a goal from Ronaldo, with a non-negligible likelihood that he or she is in business with a betting company, according to what was found in a 2014 sample of the ten most followed sports journalists in Spain.

The tweet might be read by someone at home, or even in the stands of a stadium as the game is being played, in which case a betting company might have sponsored the installation of high-speed Wi-Fi connection to facilitate bets. The bet will be preferably made in the proprietary app of the team, who partnered with the betting firm for an amount of money in exchange for adorning the stadium with the brand’s logo, although exclusivity in the electronic banners surrounding the pitch is not possible since the home team must comply with the different betting partners of the league.

Chances are that those at home watching the game on television will hear a litany of statistics about the game delivered by the commentators, provided by a data company like Perform or Dimension Data, who in turn also provide those same data to betting companies, and which are also in a partnership with the league. It is these same data that will inform a fantasy league competition, which also sponsors the league. It might be the case that among the members of the family watching the game at home there are minors who cannot legally gamble for money, for whom a social gaming alternative is also available that can smooth the transition towards real money gambling in the future.

Also, for some demographic groups, sports betting might not be as appealing as eSports, but sport teams have already started sponsoring players in those competitions. When the match has finished, fans can watch further gambling commercials such as ones related to poker, conveniently introduced by sportsmen such as Neymar, Rafael Nadal or Cristiano Ronaldo, or indulge themselves in a little trading in the forex market company Xtrade endorsed by Cristiano Ronaldo himself.

A potential downside of such convergence might be the errors derived by a faulty identification of each product’s category and characteristics. The border between not-for-real-money social gaming on sports and real money gambling might not be obvious, especially when gambling gradually approaches gaming with more gamification attributes being added to the betting experience, and simultaneously, gaming approaches gambling by implementing real or virtual money in-app micro purchases or simulating gambling environments. Blurred lines might impact the understanding of what is information and what is promotion, as has been observed with children having problems distinguishing gambling advertising from non-advertising content (as demonstrated by Helena Sandberg and her colleagues in a 2011 issue of the International Journal of Communication). Another downside could be the transference of positive attributes from sport to other markets (most notably financial trading or poker in the example above), that buy their way into the mental association by, for instance, becoming a named sponsor of a sporting competition.

However, neither the situational and structural characteristics nor the cross-marketing convergence act as singular factors determining online betting behaviour. More likely, they work by aggregation, populating a marketing and advertising ecosystem that far from curtailing other gambling motivating factors – individual factors such as the biological, psychological or social characteristics of the gambler – it facilitates them.

(Please not that this article was co-written with Dr. Hibai Lopez-Gonzalez).

Dr. Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Deans, E.G., Thomas, S.L,. Derevensky, J. & Daube, M. (2017) The influence of marketing on the sports betting attitudes and consumption behaviours of young men: implications for harm reduction and prevention strategies. Harm Reduction Journal, 14(5). doi:10.1186/s12954-017-0131-8.

Deans, E.G., Thomas, S.L,. Daube, M. & Derevensky J (2016) The role of peer influences on the normalisation of sports wagering: a qualitative study of Australian men. Addiction Research & Theory. doi: 10.1080/16066359.2016.1205042.

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