Designing Improved Safer Gambling Messages for Race and Sports Betting: What can be Learned from Other Gambling Formats and the Broader Public Health Literature?

Abstract

Safer gambling messages are one potential input to a public health approach toward reducing gambling-related harm, and yet there is no strong evidence supporting current messages such as “gamble responsibly” or “keep the fun in the game”. Furthermore, sports betting is increasing in popularity in multiple jurisdictions, such as Australia and the US, increasing the need to design effective messaging campaigns for race and sports betting. Compared to other gambling formats, such as electronic gambling machines, the level of potential skill involved in race and sports betting may raise unique issues regarding the design of effective messages. This review first highlights research from the related public health domains of alcohol and tobacco. Then, five potential areas for further messaging-based research in race and sports betting are discussed: teaching safer gambling practices, correcting gambling misperceptions, boosting conscious decision making, norm-based messages, and emotional messages. A broad approach to message design is encouraged, given the potential for individual differences in message receptivity, and for frequently-repeated messages to be ignored or cause negative psychological reactance.

An experimental study to examine whether and how Flemish and Dutch harm prevention messages on gambling advertising affect consumers’ gambling-related beliefs and intentions.

“…Moreover, the dominant discourse of “responsible gambling” has been recently criticized, as it is an industry-friendly discourse, attributing the responsibility of gambling-related harm to the consumers and ignoring the harm production capacity of gambling products (Livingstone & Rintoul, 2020; Newall, Rockloff, et al, 2023). Research has shown that this responsible gambling discourse, by focusing on personal responsibility, increases felt and enacted stigma among people who experience gambling problems, as well as feelings of personal blame and shame (Miller & Thomas, 2018).…”

“…Moreover, the dominant discourse of "responsible gambling" has been recently criticized, as it is an industry-friendly discourse, attributing the responsibility of gambling-related harm to the consumers and ignoring the harm production capacity of gambling products (Livingstone & Rintoul, 2020;Newall, Rockloff, et al, 2023).…”

“…However, the harm prevention messages currently used on gambling advertising in Belgium and the Netherlands can be mostly considered messages promoting responsible gambling. To the best of our knowledge, no research has examined the effectiveness of existing Flemish and Dutch harm prevention messages on gambling advertising in terms of recipients' gambling-related beliefs (e.g., normative perceptions, risk perceptions) and intentions, while research underlines the importance of testing existing gambling harm prevention messages (Newall, Rockloff, et al, 2023).…”

Gambling, cryptocurrency, and financial trading app marketing in English Premier League football: a frequency analysis of in-game logos

“…Research has indicated that such messages are ineffective in reducing harmful gambling (Newall, Hayes, et al, 2023;Newall, Weiss-Cohen, Singmann, Walasek, & Ludvig, 2022). Despite subsequent calls for improvements in the quality, visibility, and frequency of harm-reductive messaging in gambling marketing (Newall, Rockloff, et al, 2023), there appears to have been no substantial increase or improvement in such messaging within English football since 2020 (Purves et al, 2020).…”

Testing the effectiveness of different safer gambling messages for sports and race betting: A five-week experiment

“…Historically, these messages usually emphasise gambling as a personal choice (Miller & Thomas, 2018). Although there is not a lot of evidence that these general messages work (Newall, Hayes et al, 2023;Newall, Rockloff et al 2023;Newall, Weiss-Cohen et al 2022), some research has found pop-up messaging on electronic gambling machines (EGMs) to be moderately effective, at least in the short-term (Bjørseth et al, 2020), particularly those that encourage self-appraisal (McAuliffe et al, 2021). These pop-up messages can focus on general advice or specific advice targeted to the gambler's circumstances (e.g., "You're playing faster than most people."…”