This year marks the 25th anniversary of the International Center for Responsible Gaming’s (ICRG) Annual Conference on Gambling and Addiction. A milestone of such magnitude calls not just for congratulations, but reflection. As the gaming industry has grown and evolved throughout the world over the course of this period, the ICRG has continued to drive change and lead the field forward with powerful research that helps increase the understanding of gambling harms and find effective methods of mitigation. But in an industry hot on trends, how has it managed to remain both relevant and meaningful?
A Methodical Start
Prior to the establishment of the ICRG in 1996, the field of gambling research was undeveloped and lacked a substantial number of peer-reviewed studies on gambling-related risks. From its inception, the ICRG was committed to reversing this trend, becoming the first serious funding source in the area of gambling research. The ICRG introduced a commitment to rigorous scientific standards into the field, including an insistence that, to be taken seriously, all research had to be peer-reviewed. Boyd Gaming Corporation and Station Casinos provided the start-up funds for what was then the National Center for Responsible Gaming. Other leading gaming companies, including Harrah’s Entertainment, Inc., International Game Technology, Mandalay Resort Group, MGM MIRAGE and Park Place Entertainment Corporation were early and generous supporters. Because of concern about undue influence or bias, the ICRG created a multi-layered firewall to insulate the research from the industry (you can learn more about it at www.icrg.org).
In 1996, the ICRG awarded its first grant to Harvard Medical School’s Division on Addictions, led by Howard Shaffer, Ph.D., to conduct a meta-analysis of prevalence studies in order to determine a rate of how many people in the U.S. had a gambling problem. By 2000, in just four short years, ICRG funding had produced more than 20 new, peer-reviewed articles in the field of gambling studies and by 2006 that number had doubled. In 2009, in an effort to model the incredible success of Dr. Shaffer’s shop at Harvard, the ICRG launched the Centers of Excellence in Gambling Research, which employ a long-term, institutional approach to conducting innovative and multidisciplinary investigations on seminal research issues. The Centers also provide extensive mentorship to new investigators and disseminate their research through education programs. To that end, establishing the research field was the ICRG’s first – but not its exclusive – priority.
From the beginning, the mission of the ICRG was to help individuals and families affected by gambling disorder and to prevent the onset of gambling problems through high quality scientific research and evidence-based educational programming on gambling disorder and responsible gambling. In addition to the aforementioned ICRG Conference on Gambling and Addiction, the ICRG has developed a variety of resources for the industry, gaming regulators, public health officials and clinicians over the course of its history. Examples include funding the development of the Brief Biosocial Gambling Screen (a three-question screen used by clinicians to assess clients for gambling disorder), a robust “Gambling and Public Health” guide for policymakers, and a variety of industry responsible gaming education campaigns and training tools.
By necessity, to meet the underserved needs of its stakeholders, the ICRG grew quickly. At the same time, the industry was evolving rapidly.
The Migration to Alignment
When The Mirage (R.I.P.) opened in 1989 there were as yet no established best practices for player protection from gambling-related harms to follow the industry as it would soon spill out of Nevada and New Jersey, forging a new global gaming industry footprint. The tension between industry prosperity and customer harm is natural in any highly regulated industry, but the compromises and trust-building that made regulators comfortable with the near cessation of organized crime in legal gaming led to self-regulation (followed by audit) in many jurisdictions. However, those original, big box casinos – whether brick-and-mortar or riverboat – offered only a limited number of channels for player engagement and thus risk. Today, with the migration to distributed systems and the uber-accessibility of online casinos and sports wagering, engagement is everywhere.
And yet, more than three decades later, with an exponentially more diverse and complicated gaming product environment, regulators and the industry may finally have intersected. That is to say, there is legitimate alignment between the industry and regulators regarding the prioritization of player protection in the current environment. This is due in no small part to the ICRG.
The table below highlights a sampling of ICRG-funded research topics since the repeal of PASPA (Professional & Amateur Sports Protection Act) in 2018, which coincides roughly with the shift to technology-driven growth dominating gaming. As you can see, research at this time also begins to shift toward more technology-dominant topics and new forms of gaming.
| SELECTED ICRG FUNDED RESEARCH, 2019-PRESENT | |
| Project Grants | Principal Investigator |
| 2019 | |
| Don’t Go There: A geospatial mHealth app for gambling disorder | Jeremiah Weinstock, PhD, Saint Louis University |
| 2020 | |
| A virtual reality intervention for reducing problematic gambling in young adults | Robert Astur, PhD, University of Connecticut |
| Identifying and modeling the schedules of reinforcement in live-odds betting | Simon Dymond, PhD, Swansea University |
| 2022 | |
| Sports wagering in the US: A nationally representative longitudinal study | Joshua Grubbs, PhD, University of New Mexico |
| Impulsivity and online sports betting behavior: Untangling the causal relationship | Dr. Anja Kraplin, Technische Universitaẗ Dresden |
| Online gambling and death by suicide: A quasi-experimental approach to gambling policy impacts | Mark van der Maas, PhD, Rutgers University |
| Exploring pathways to sports gambling and related harms among simulated sport video gamer players: A multi-wave study | Principal Investigator: Devin Mills, PhD, Texas Tech University |
| Building better player feedback: An assessment of the responsible gambling utility of the positive play quiz | Nassim Tabri, PhD, Carleton University |
| 2023 | |
| Optimizing voluntary engagement with technology-based tools to prevent and reduce gambling harms | Sally Gainsbury, PhD, University of Sydney |
| New approaches to advance pre-commitment: Assessing whether a mandatory (versus voluntary) limit adherence feature and reward facilitates responsible gambling | Michael Wohl, PhD, Carleton University |
| Behavioral risks, harms, and correlates of young adult sports betting: Short/long-term associations of bi-weekly assessments | Scott Graupensperger, PhD, University of Washington |
| An investigation of esports betting: Involvement, risk, and gambling-related harms among Esports bettors | Wen Li Anthony, PhD, MSW, Rutgers Center Gambling Studies |
| Assessing risk for problem gambling among lottery players: A machine learning approach | Paul Sacco, PhD, University of Maryland, Baltimore |
| Using blackjack hand history to extrapolate player strategies: Creating novel simulation program to inform online risk detection | Matthew Tom, PhD, Cambridge Health Alliance |
| 2024 | |
| Modernized and personalized prevention of college student gambling harm | Rory A. Pfund, PhD, University of Memphis |
| Multidimensional loss chasing online: Considering cut and temporal references, coming in hot, improved predictive ability | Timothy C. Edson, PhD, Harvard Medical School |
| Examining responsible gambling advertising practices and testing effects of actual responsible gambling messages | Seth P. McCullock, PhD, Cambridge Health Alliance |
| A Safe Bet: Design and evaluation of a player-tailored online responsible gambling promotion framework | Marilisa Boffo, PhD, Erasmus University |
| Exploring a lottery-promoted Gambling Disorder Screening Day intervention | Debi LaPlante, PhD, Cambridge Health Alliance |
What is also clear is that by this time ICRG funded research has extended beyond its early, necessary work of identifying and measuring the issue. Researchers have begun to build on that foundation and now are looking at a variety of technology-driven interventions and at-risk populations, and using game technologies to drive their research and find practical ways to address player harm. With its critical firewall still in place, the ICRG – and, more specifically, the new researchers it has worked hard to attract to the field – now are able to practically address some of the greatest needs of its stakeholders. This, in turn, can lead to collectively informed decision-making, alignment, and a synergy between the industry and its regulators that, historically, ensures a more sustainable industry. This is why responsible gaming and the work of the ICRG matter to all of us.
Nearly $40 million has been committed to the ICRG, through contributions from the casino gaming industry, equipment manufacturers, vendors, sports wagering companies, tribal casinos, related organizations and individuals, contributing to more than 400 scholarly articles published in highly competitive, peer-reviewed scientific journals. But there is still work to be done; work that impacts public policy, strengthens responsible gambling and improves the health and well-being of the people and communities affected by the continued growth of the industry. I encourage you to join us next month at the ICRG’s 25th annual conference, to learn more about the work being done and how your organization can support it.
