Voluntary betting controls are a bad gamble – News – The University of Sydney

The GTRC analysed 39,853 customer accounts from six leading sports and race betting sites in Australia over the financial year of 2018-2019.

It found that 83 percent did not use any of the voluntary tools studied for example deposit limits, timeouts and self-exclusion/deactivating the account. Almost all of those who used the tools used only deposit limits. Of those who set deposit limits, half made no changes to their limit after setting it, while 766 people (one in eight) made between one and three changes and 32 people made more than 15 changes.

Interestingly, those who set deposit limits were found to be similar to those who did not gamble, on most characteristics studied such as age, gender, betting frequency, and overall outcome, while those who used timeout/self-exclusions stood out: they were younger, more likely to be male, placed more bets and in bigger amounts, won less, had fewer days without gambling and had more variability in the amount they gambled and the amount they won from day to day.

Dr Heirene explained: This painted a clear picture: timeout/self-exclusion users appear to gamble in a more problematic way and this insight can focus future research and targeted interventions.

See the article here:

Voluntary betting controls are a bad gamble - News - The University of Sydney