According to a recent study, people who bet at least monthly have experienced more negative attitudes and harms from gambling as the popularity of mobile sports betting soars in the Bay State.
SEIGMA Study
The Social and Economic Impacts of Gambling in Massachusetts (SEIGMA) research team recently conducted the latest of three online gambling surveys by the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The results were culled from online participants who gamble monthly or more frequently, and the findings revealed a rise in problem gambling from 12.7% in 2014 to 20.9% in 2022 to 25.6% in 2023.
Rachel Volberg, SEIGMA’s principal investigator and research professor of epidemiology in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences, stated, “It’s pretty startling, to be honest. While the online panels were not representative of the population, they were very informative in regard to people with gambling difficulties. It’s very helpful from a surveillance and monitoring perspective.”
Post-Pandemic Spike
Volberg cites the elimination of the pandemic as a contributing factor to the increase in problem gambling, saying it “probably suppressed the gambling behavior of people who were gambling recreationally more than the behavior of people who were at risk for a gambling problem.”
The increase in gambling was not solely restricted to an increase in online sports betting but rather a combination of lottery games, sports betting, private wagering, horse racing, bingo, and online gambling as well. The survey was conducted shortly after online sports betting launched in Massachusetts and showed a stark increase in those who gamble on sports from the original survey conducted in 2014.
A decade ago, 78.2% of the respondents stated they had not bet on sports in the previous 12 months, compared to 45.7% in 2023, when online sports betting became legal in the Bay State.
Cause for Concern
It is not surprising that more people bet on sports when the market becomes legal, but the study focuses on those who may be adversely impacted by it. “I think it has led people who are already vulnerable to engage or re-engage with this particular type of gambling that’s now getting lots of media attention,” Volberg said.
There was also a decline in people’s perceptions regarding gambling, with fewer people believing increased employment and economic benefits are the primary benefits of a legal market and gambling in all forms should be legalized.
“Based on the general population survey that was done in 2021, I didn’t expect that we would see a big change in attitudes toward gambling, but we do seem to be seeing that, especially among the people betting on sports,” Volberg stated.
Although Volberg stressed that an online survey does not necessarily represent the general population, she does believe that attitudes and behaviors are changing with the growing popularity of online sports betting. “I think it’s definitely a cause for concern about what the population impacts of sports betting are going to be because these indicators from the monthly gamblers in the online panel are not going in a direction that says there’s going to be less gambling harm in Massachusetts in the future.”
