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Lopez-Gonzalez, H., Griffiths, M.D. & Estévez, A. (2018). In-play betting, gambling
severity, and other risks: A survey study of Spanish sports bettors. Communication
and Sport, in press
Abstract
Fans watching live sport events, both mediated or in stadia, have witnessed an increase
in sports betting products. Most of these products feature in-play betting, that is, the
ability to bet on a game once it has started while watching it. In-play betting has raised
many concerns among responsible gambling advocates due to its perceived relationship
with problem gambling behaviour. This study explored the association between in-play
betting and problem gambling. More specifically, the study examined how motives for
consuming sport and how involved sports fans were in watching sport affected their
gambling. Also, adjacent risk behaviours to in-play betting (such as consuming junk food
and alcohol) during live sports betting were examined. Using a survey comprising 659
sports bettors from Spain, the study found that compared to participants not engaging in
in-play betting, in-play bettors reported higher (i) problem gambling severity, (ii) sport
watching involvement, (iii) consumption of sport to escape from everyday
preoccupations, and (iv) consumption of junk food and/or alcohol while watching sport.
These findings make the case that in-play betting regulators and providers should be
cognizant of the interplay of sport-specific, media-related, and other risks, involved in the
act of in-play betting while watching live sport.
Keywords: Gambling, in-play betting, sports betting, sport watching, problem gambling
Introduction
In recent years, sports betting has increased worldwide in terms of money wagered and
revenue (European Gaming & Betting Association, 2016), and has become the fastest
growing type of gambling in multiple territories while other gambling products have
stagnated (Gainsbury & Russell, 2015). Unlike the majority of gambling forms, sports
betting is based on a pre-existent cultural manifestation, namely sport, that is theoretically
independent from gambling upon it. Gambling on sports, inasmuch a sporting activity,
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interacts with a broader range of psychosocially significant elements including (among
others) sports fandom, sport team identity, televised sport viewing (i.e., media
psychology), sport consumption-related behaviours (i.e., communal viewing, eating junk
food, drinking alcohol), and emotionally-laden situations (Gordon, Gurrieri, & Chapman,
2015). This singularity has multiple implications for tackling problem gambling as well
as raising important questions for the appropriateness of all-encompassing solutions to
treat, minimise, and prevent sports betting-related harm (Lopez-Gonzalez, Estévez, &
Griffiths, 2018a).
A particularly paradigmatic expression of sports betting is in-play betting (Killick &
Griffiths, 2018). In-play betting (alternatively called in-running or live action betting) is
the kind of gambling that occurs when gamblers place their bets once sport events have
commenced, as opposed to bets placed before the start of games, as was the case of
traditional match-based betting, before online gambling emerged. In-play bets have
become the most popular type of gambling among sports fans, and constitute as much as
70% of the money wagered in sports betting in Spain (Directorate General for the
regulation of gambling [DGOJ], 2017) where the present study was carried out. Bet365,
the global leading bookmaker, reported that up to 80% of their sports books revenue
derives from in-play betting (Jackson, 2015). Consequently, some jurisdictions in Europe
and elsewhere (e.g., Australia) have banned or severely limited the placing of in-play bets
due to their perceived addictive component, despite the paucity of empirical evidence
regarding the detrimental effects of in-play betting (Hing, Russell, Li, & Vitartas, 2018).
The singularities of in-play betting
In-play betting has been associated with instantaneous, less planned gambling behaviours,
and therefore it appears theoretically plausible to associate it with reckless and
irresponsible gambling, for which some preliminary scientific evidence already exists
(see Killick & Griffiths [2018] for a recent review). The first group of studies to assess
in-play betting in relation to gambling frequency found that heavy gamblers bet more
frequently with in-play options than occasional gamblers in a sample of approximately
45,000 subscribers to Bwin sports betting operator (Braverman, Laplante, Nelson, &
Shaffer, 2013; Broda et al., 2008; LaBrie, LaPlante, Nelson, Schumann, & Shaffer, 2007;
LaPlante, Schumann, LaBrie, & Shaffer, 2008; Nelson et al., 2008). However, those
studies did not include a validated screening tool for problem gambling, and therefore
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could only assess the relationship of in-play betting and the responsible gambling
standards set by the bookmaker. A more recent study with sports bettors from Australia
- wherein in-play betting represents approximately 50% of bets, despite its restrictive
regulation - suggested that in-play betting was associated with greater impulse betting,
higher problem gambling severity, and more frequent gambling and expenditure (Hing,
Li, Vitartas, & Russell, 2018).
In-play betting has a number of characteristics that make an association with problem
gambling more likely. Most notably for the media and communication field, in-play
betting typically occurs in a context of sport viewing, since being able to bet upon what
individuals are watching is the principal selling proposition of the product. This gives
form to a very specific gambling setting characterised by multiple determinants. First, in-
play betting comprises a simultaneous watching and betting of/on sport – an activity that
has consequences. For example, when sport fans and bettors watch a live sport event they
face multiple temptations. A neuroimaging study investigating neural activation found
that those bettors who felt confident about a match outcome experienced more activation
in their reward processing and less inhibitory control (Brevers et al., 2018). It is apparent
that bettors are not emotionally indifferent to what happens at live sporting events because
they bring their team identification, social identity, and overall emotional connection into
the sport-gambling mix (Giulianotti, 2002). This adds to the stereotypical
characterisations of sports fans as individuals with tendencies to engage in potentially
reckless activities, with drinking alcohol ranking high among these (Ostrowsky, 2018).
In addition, the simultaneous interaction between viewing and live betting requires speed
and adaptation to live game events, and higher game speeds and event frequencies tend
to have a higher association with problem gambling (Harris & Griffiths, 2018). In-play
betting is also allied with second screen devices (i.e., smartphones, tablets, and to a lesser
extent, laptops) that facilitates an immersive betting and watching experience alongside
the watching of televised or streamed sport (typically the primary screen although some
fans will also bet via mobile devices while watching the sport in stadia and/or while
listening to a match on the radio). Bookmakers have been able to capitalise on the
penetration of second screen devices in individuals’ everyday lives. The latest data
publicly available concerning sport consumption indicated that in Western countries,
individuals very frequently use second screen devices while watching sport (45% of the
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time in the USA, 43% in the UK, 42% in Australia, 35% in Germany, and 40% in France).
These numbers are even higher in newly industrialised countries such as India, China,
Turkey, and Indonesia (SportBusiness Group, 2014). An illustration of this alliance is
‘eyes-free’ technology, which allows watching sport and betting on a second screen
device without looking away from television or computer-based streaming (Centieiro,
Romão, & Dias, 2014). When bookmakers’ advertising and marketing materials
accentuate their online platform’s responsiveness, intuitiveness, and speed (Lopez-
Gonzalez, Estévez, & Griffiths, 2018b), they are also fostering an immersive,
synchronous sport watching experience.
Second, in-play betting is often accompanied by drinking alcohol (among other risk
behaviours) when the watching of sport happens in the context of a bar, pub, or other
environments where alcohol is sold and consumed on-site. From a cultural perspective,
the steep increase of soccer ticket prices in the past two decades, combined with the
penetration of televised sport, has facilitated the migration of many working class soccer
fans from stadium terraces into pubs, particularly in the UK (Dixon, 2013). Until they
started broadcasting live sport, pubs were generally viewed as pre-match and post-match
meeting points, but not in-match venues. Alcohol and sport viewing have become ever
more inextricably intertwined, with pubs turning into “the fabric of masculine culture”
(Dixon, 2014, p. 388), although women have progressively occupied this masculine space
as a way of transgressing feminine boundaries (Fuchs & Le Hénaff, 2014; Palmer, 2015).
From a clinical perspective, there is empirical evidence that even a small quantity of
alcohol can impair self-control and make gamblers persist in their gambling (Kyngdon &
Dickerson, 1999). Similar results have been obtained in nationally representative samples
of citizens in which more frequent use of alcohol was significantly correlated to more
gambling-related problems in the US (French, Maclean, & Ettner, 2008) and the UK
(Griffiths, Wardle et al., 2010). A recent study using behavioural tracking data from
player cards also reported that slot machine gamblers lost more money in environments
that sold alcohol compared to those environments that did not (Leino, Sagoe et al., 2017).
However, other researchers have discrepancies with such conclusions and determined that
only gamblers with disordered alcohol use allowed their drinking to interfere with their
gambling behaviour, finding no statistically significant association between sub-clinical
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alcohol use and gambling disorder (Harries, Redden, Leppink, Chamberlain, & Grant,
2017).
Third, sports fans who are also bettors have to reconcile their inner conflicts in real time.
For instance, bettors who support a specific soccer team might feel compelled to bet
money on the match result as an act of ‘wishful’ betting (i.e., betting on the outcome they
desire to see happening or because they feel like ‘traitors’ if they bet against their own
team). It has been demonstrated in the context of National League Football (NFL) that
fans exhibit a durable optimistic bias that makes them more likely to foresee their team
winning (Massey, Simmons, & Armor, 2011). On the other hand, some other bettors
might want to offset a potential emotional loss by securing at least a financial gain by
betting against their own team – what has been called ‘hedging against future failure’
(Agha & Tyler, 2017). Another source of conflict is the supposedly collective nature of
watching sport/betting. Both sports viewing and sports betting are typically portrayed in
media outputs as group activities (e.g., in adverts), although there is strong evidence
indicating that many fans watch sport alone (ESPN, 2010). Similarly, in an Australian-
based sample, 31.5% of sports bettors reported watching sport alone (Hing, Lamont,
Vitartas, & Fink, 2015b). The combination of solitude and gambling can be problematic,
as many anxiety-coping gambling habits derive from solitary gambling (Bristow et al.,
2018).
Fourth, in-play betting opportunities run in parallel to in-game gambling promotions and
advertising stimuli when consumed via television or streaming devices. Several scholars
have expressed their concerns about the gradual normalisation of betting habits in sport
contexts (Deans, Thomas, Daube, & Derevensky, 2016; Lopez-Gonzalez, Guerrero-Solé,
Estévez, & Griffiths, 2018d; Pitt, Thomas, & Bestman, 2016). Furthermore, a content
analysis of British and Spanish sports betting advertising showed that 46.7% of the
advertisements portrayed at least one fictional character betting in-play (Lopez-Gonzalez,
Guerrero-Solé, & Griffiths, 2018e). Sport fans are usually exposed to numerous betting
enticements during live sport viewing (Milner, Hing, Vitartas, & Lamont, 2013), which
results in greater implicit recall for betting brands (Thomas, Pitt, Bestman, Randle, &
Daube, 2016).