Assessing the Playing Field: A Prospective Longitudinal Study of Internet Sports Gambling Behavior

Abstract

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 euro (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 euro 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.

An Empirical Study of Gender Differences in Online Gambling

“…Respondents were excluded if they only answered the demographic questions and 5 none of the questions on gambling, or if they indicated they did not gamble online. Excluding participants in this way replicated strategies from similar previous studies such as LaBrie, et al (2007).…”

How Do Gamblers End Gambling: Longitudinal Analysis of Internet Gambling Behaviors Prior to Account Closure Due to Gambling Related Problems

“…Recently, researchers began to learn from the study of actual Internet gamblers (LaBrie et al 2007(LaBrie et al , 2008LaPlante 2008a, b). The present study extends this growing body of in vivo research by examining the natural course of gambling patterns evidenced by a group of Internet gamblers who reported gambling-related problems and, consequently, voluntarily ended their gambling accounts because of these problems.…”

“…The present study extends this growing body of in vivo research by examining the natural course of gambling patterns evidenced by a group of Internet gamblers who reported gambling-related problems and, consequently, voluntarily ended their gambling accounts because of these problems. We will use a prospective cohort recently detailed in an epidemiological description of Internet gamblers (LaBrie et al 2007). The advent of Internet gambling provides an ideal context to study gamblers who might experience gambling problems because this technology permits us to examine prospectively every bet, with its stake and odds.…”

Identifying risk and mitigating gambling-related harm in online poker

“…Despite the public concern regarding the proliferation of online gambling (Korn & Shaffer, 2004), and the common finding that online gamblers are more likely than offline gamblers to be problem gamblers (Griffiths et al, 2009;LaBrie et al, 2007;Wood & Williams, 2009), relatively little is known about the psychosocial risk factors for online gamblers (de Soriano, Javed & Yousafzai, 2012). The large majority of internet gambling research categorises online gamblers as a homogenous population and have compared online gamblers and offline gamblers.…”

“…Current research shows that internet gamblers are more likely to display problem gambling criteria than land--based gamblers (Kuss & Griffiths, 2012;LaBrie et al, 2007;Petry, 2006;Wood & Williams, 2007. However, it is important not to interpret this finding as evidence that gambling online necessarily is a causal factor in problem gambling.…”