Betting strategies allow gamblers to navigate uncertainty in gambling environments by employing probability calculations and risk assessment. These structured approaches to betting can enable bettors to make more informed decisions regarding when and how much to place on bets, taking historical results into consideration.
Studies on digital gambling marketing have demonstrated the importance of embedding safer gambling messages into daily online activities, behaviors and rituals of bettors. This research project seeks to examine this approach by offering Twitter messaging with safe-gambling messages directly to regular sport bettors.
Statistical Methods
Statistics is a tool commonly employed in scientific research to analyze and interpret data obtained from studies. Utilizing statistical tools allows for easier organization and summarization of large amounts of data, helping researchers draw accurate conclusions based on experiments or observations conducted.
Descriptive statistical analysis helps organize and summarize data in graphs and tables, while checking assumptions and providing guidance for further examination. Two such descriptive statistics include mean and median. Conversely, inferential statistics use samples of data from an entire population to make inferences about it all at once.
In this study, an endorsed control message (“only bet what you can afford”) was linked with significantly decreased gambling expenditures, urges, and risk-related beliefs. This pattern suggests that self-reflection in the form of self-control messages may prove useful; consistent with previous research on their effects in gambling.
Data Analysis
To reduce any potential influence from participants’ individual characteristics on their betting behavior, a stratified random assignment approach was employed. This entailed stratifying participants based on age, gender and whether or not they had bet commercially on sports or racing within the last year. Participants were recruited through online panels before being filtered for those who had bet multiple panels commercially on sports and racing or were straightlining or showing suspicious responses.
Messages were evaluated for helpfulness and ease of comprehension; the highest-rated one being “only bet what you can afford”. Overall outcomes decreased across weeks 1-5 possibly as a result of self-reflection prompted by this message and others on controlling expenditure.
Analysis of interviews produced an adaptive grounded theory model which identified themes. These themes included using metaphors which depict betting as inevitable and inexorable akin to instinct or sexual relations – reflecting gambling operators’s primary marketing strategy of portraying betting as part of everyday life in order to attract and retain bettors.
Results
Participants valued instant, around-the-clock access to betting from their smartphones. Betting could take place anytime – be it while sleeping, at work or commuting – rather than attending land-based venues; moreover they were able to place bets on various events than with traditional bookmakers. Unfortunately this accessibility can facilitate more impulsive, spontaneous and riskier behaviors when placing bets.
Overall, no differences were noted among groups regarding amounts bet commercially on sports and race betting, time spent gambling, harm experienced from gambling or urges or beliefs surrounding it, control messages such as ‘only bet what you can afford’ were highly rated as helpful to participants; perhaps suggesting that self-reflection inspired by this study proved beneficial to all parties involved.
Interviewees reported exposure to extensive digital marketing, such as betting advertising and direct messages from gambling operators. Interviewees highlighted two prominent stereotypes in Australian wagering marketing: men were depicted as protagonists while women were shown as sexual objects – both portrayals are likely to fuel gendered betting motivations such as becoming richer, more attractive or powerful, or fleeing mundane life situations.
Conclusions
This study shows that digital marketing strategies for sports betting can be highly successful and have an enormous impact on gambling behaviors, including increased participation, frequency and expenditure; greater variety in bets; spontaneous bets placed without prior consideration or planning; riskier bets with longer odds; impulsive betting habits and losses being chased down more aggressively than before – findings which can inform harm reduction measures, regulation or policy.
Positive emotional and norm-based messages were found more helpful and easy to comprehend than control messages, with “only bet what you can afford” receiving the highest rating, perhaps reflecting an underlying belief that monitoring one’s individual expenditures each week as a viable self-limiting strategy.
Two biases limit the generalisability of this research: selection bias and cultural bias. Although focusing on Australia and New Zealand was necessary to identify common characteristics of digital marketing strategies for gambling in these contexts, open coding of transcripts enabled identification of initial features pertinent to this study, with codes later collapsing into themes with their shared characteristics.