In 2019, Entain launched a five-year research study on gambling and gambling-related problems among its patrons. Principle investigators Debi LaPlante, Ph.D, and Sarah Nelson, Ph.D, both affiliated with the Harvard Medical School’s Division on Addiction Research, were given access to anonymized player data from sports betting, gaming products and other online gaming platforms.
“Prior to that, academic research focused on self-report methods and provided a somewhat biased picture of what internet gambling was actually like,” said LaPlante Wednesday during a presentation at Entain Sustain ESG Showcase. “By using player records, we were able to observe that internet gambling is a whole lot more moderate than popularly assumed and discussed.”
The showcase served as forum for the U.K.-based gaming company’s approach to sustainability, responsible gambling and community and sporting investment.
In addition to using academic research to provide insights about internet gambling, LaPlante and Nelson want to train internet gambling stakeholders, including gaming employees and regulators, to be able to recognize and address signs of addiction. LaPlante added that goal is to elevate the quality of gambling research through different methodological strategies, including “surveys of literature so that we can tell Entain and others about the current state of science,” she said.
Also important is reaching out to players who need help. Nelson said that there are four metrics strongly associated with online problem gaming: percentage of annual income spent on online gambling; variability in the daily amount wagered, or monthly amount wagered; and monthly amount lost.
Exceeding thresholds on each of these metrics predicted positive screen for gambling problems,” Nelson said. “As a caveat, these findings were statistically significant, but the accuracy of these models and many like them is really only moderate. What that means is thresholds like these can and should be used as guides for consumers, but should not be used on their own to trigger actions that assume that any given individual has a gambling problem.”
Snapshots of research conducted by LaPlante and Nelson can be found here and here.
