A two-year study of the gambling habits of Australians has discovered that participation rates are down but the number of people gambling online has doubled.
The Second National Study of Interactive Gambling in Australia, funded by Gambling Research Australia, found that overall gambling dropped from 64.3 percent to 56.9 percent during the period under study, from 2010 to 2019.
However, the number of online gamblers rose from 8.1 percent in 2020 to 17.5 percent in 2019. A total of 15,000 people were surveyed, reported Inside Asian Gaming, and online lotteries got most of the action, drawing 10.1 percent of people surveyed. Almost 6 percent of respondents bet on horse racing and 5.8 percent bet on sports.
“This growth in online gambling has been driven by faster internet speeds, the convenience of betting on smartphone apps, extensive advertising and inducements, and new betting options like multi-bets,” said Professor Nerilee Hing from CQUniversity’s Experimental Gambling Research Laboratory.
“New online activities have also been introduced including eSports, fantasy sports, skin gambling and loot boxes.”
The study found the average online gambler was likely to be a young, educated male who gambled across multiple platforms.
The study also found that 9.1 percent of Australian adults had experienced some level of harm from their own gambling and 6 percent from another person’s gambling, with online gamblers twice as likely as land-based only gamblers to experience harm.
