Betting apps are more toxic than you think

Betting companies all publicly espouse their commitment to responsible gaming. They help fund programmes to combat addiction and give customers the option to exclude themselves from betting or to enrol in "cool-off" periods that keep them from logging in for a day or two.

- BLOOMBERG

But when pretending you cannot help yourself becomes a strategy for getting more leeway, that seems like a sign that these measures are not enough. Here is another sign they are not working: A pair of studies published earlier in 2024 suggest online sports betting and its highly seductive sibling, online casino gaming, are driving an increase in rates of irresponsible gambling and doing significant damage to the financial health of many people.

For the past six years, the US has essentially been running a large-scale field study on what happens when you put instant access to legal betting markets in people's pockets. Since the US Supreme Court struck down federal restrictions on sports betting in 2018, the market has grown rapidly, with 30 states and the District of Columbia now allowing online betting. Americans have legally wagered almost US$400 billion (S$523 billion) over that span, most of it online.

Early indications are that, for a small portion of bettors, the results are calamitous. In a study released in June, researchers from Southern Methodist University (SMU), the University of Maryland and the University of California, San Diego used anonymous bank records from hundreds of thousands of bettors across the US to track their gambling spend and monthly income from 2019 to 2023.

In states with access to online sports betting, they found, rates of people spending at least 10 per cent of their income on gambling rose slightly, with the greatest increases among low-income bettors. Previous research in Canada shows that spending even 1 per cent of income on gambling correlates with negative physical, mental and financial health outcomes.

"If you're spending more than 10 per cent of your income on gambling, that's almost certainly going to cause problems in other aspects of your life," said Dr Wayne Taylor, an assistant professor of marketing at SMU's Cox School of Business and a co-author of the study.