Assessing the Playing Field: A Prospective Longitudinal Study of Internet Sports Gambling Behavior |
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Authors: | Richard A LaBrie Debi A LaPlante Sarah E Nelson Anja Schumann Howard J Shaffer |
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Institution: | (1) Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA;(2) Division on Addictions, Cambridge Health Alliance, 101 Station Landing, 2nd Floor, Medford, MA 02155, USA |
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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 (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 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. |
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Keywords: | Gambling Internet gambling Internet Epidemiology Public health |
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