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Introduction
Gambling is a form of leisure activity that is legal in Spain. In person or online, 89.5% of Spanish people gamble (Labrador et al., 2014), or 70% do so in person (Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego, DGOJ, 2016). Gambling constitutes a relevant employment and income source for the government. 31.993 million euros were bet in 2018, with real betting figures (bets minus prizes) of 9.837 million euros, directly giving employment to 85.047 people (DGOJ, 2019).
A reduced percentage of gamblers see their own lives negatively affected by their gambling activity. Labrador et al. (2014) show a vital prevalence of 1.1% of pathological gamblers, 1% of problematic players and 2.9% of at-risk players. Similar figures are reported by the DGOJ (2016): vital prevalence of 0.95% of “pathological players” and 1% of “problematic players”, and an annual prevalence of 0.3% and 0.6% respectively. To reduce these negative consequences of gambling, many countries, including Spain, have developed policies of responsible gambling.
Factors associated with gambling problems have been flagged regarding (a) the player: being male, having irrational thoughts, high impulsivity, involved in gambling and alcohol abuse; (b) gambling: accessibility and structural characteristics; and (c) the environment: legislation, social and family acceptance of gambling. Moreover, advertising of gambling currently stands out, particularly due to the rise in advertisements of sports bets.
In order for people to play, it is important to make a game known, as well as the opportunity of having fun and winning prizes. Due to this, in 2018 gambling companies in Spain spent 328 million euros on advertising, 48% more than in 2017 (DGOJ, 2019). This expenditure in advertising has been increasing significantly in recent years (Figure 1), coinciding with higher availability and accessibility of gambling, without clear knowledge of the impact this has on at-risk groups, such as adolescents and youth (A&Y).
The Spanish government has legislated regarding gambling advertisin (Law 13/2011, 27th of May, Gambling regulation). Opting for a self-regulating system from gambling companies, the DGOJ (2012) created a Code of Conduct and a Follow-up Commission. According to this Code, advertising has to be truthful and identifiable, signalling its consequences, not presenting gambling as a solution to any problems, nor like a priority, with special relevance to the protection of those under the age of 18. This legal framework appears insufficient, due to the fact that the self-regulation of gambling companies can conflict with their interest in maximising their profits.
Currently, gambling advertising, especially sports bets, can reach people's homes through communication media and the Internet, even during time frames dedicated to children, providing a variety of offers in moments of particular implication such as during a sport events, and with information on winning odds that is not always realistic, giving rise to alarm due to the feared negative impact on vulnerable populations such as A&Y. In fact, even though gambling is illegal for minors in Spain, in 2018, 8.3% of 14 years old adolescents had gambled online and 18.6% in person, percentages that increased up to 11.6% and 25.6% in the 17 years old age group. Only 38.8% expressed they were informed of the effects and problems associated with gambling (Survey on drug use in secondary schools in Spain, ESTUDES, 2019).
There are no games of chance directed to minors, at least formally, the same way that minors cannot be represented in any way in gambling advertising. Nonetheless, Chóliz (2016) points out that 44.64% of gambling cases involving young players (below 24 years old) were associated with online betting.
According to Chóliz and Lamas (2017) male minors admitted, in a relevant percentage, to having gambled in relation to sports in the last months: betting games (40.9%) and sports bets (45.6%). In the case of female minors, their preferences are shown for lotteries and scratch cards (with a participation of 20.4% and 25.9%, respectively), without reaching higher figures than those observed for male minors playing any game, except for, marginally, scratch cards (25.9% vs 25.3%), contests (4.7% vs. 4.5%) and online bingo (4.2% vs. 3.3%).
These high percentages of participation in gambling translate, logically, in the presence of a pathology for the players; for example, Becoña (2001) finds 5.6% prevalence of problematic gambling in players younger than 21 years old in Galicia. Nevertheless, this setting can have changed in a significant manner in recent years: Chóliz (2016) describes how, since the passing of the gambling legislation of 2011, the percentage of young players in rehabilitation has increased from 3.8% to 16% in just 3 years.
When considering predisposition factors in the onset of gambling, multiple alternatives have been considered: biological variables; upbringing (abuse, negligence or positive gambling models); stressful life events that generate distress or emotional beliefs that could be alleviated through gambling; early experience (in particular significant initial profits or social pressure, which are acknowledged by up to 80% of gamblers in rehabilitation who had started gambling as minors); and the characteristics of accessibility, availability and social acceptance of gambling (Instituto de la Juventud, 2018). In this last section we can consider the effect of advertising.
The impact of advertising on the development of gambling problems is unknown, which is also the case for all types of advertisements or games. It is also undetermined whether this has specific effects on certain groups (e.g., young people, students, men), as well as the processes by which advertising facilitates gambling problems. The disparity in the data available could be due to the distinct methods, evaluation instruments, target population, advertising systems, or games advertised, included in the studies available on this matter.
It is difficult to know how many people have gambling problems due to advertising, perhaps because of the small impact this might have (Binde, 2014), or because it could not be the most relevant factor. However, the alarm exists since there are no answers to questions such as: Does gambling advertising promote initial gambling behaviour or its maintenance? Does it influence different collectives in a distinct way? What responsibility does it have in gambling problems?
Consequently, the aim of this investigation is to provide a revision of research on advertising of gambling on A&Y.
Methods
A systematic review was carried out, following PRISMA recommendations (Moher Liberati et al., 2009), and the instrument SPIDER (Cooke et al., 2012) was used to define the research question, allowing greater efficiency in the search of qualitative and mixed studies. The review was focused on studies with A&Y, on exposure to advertising of gambling (quantity, type and contents); with observation or descriptive designs; with the use of interviews, self-reports or objective measures; in quantitative, qualitative and mixed empirical studies. Inclusion criteria were: empirical studies; published in peer reviewed journals; which carry out observations, or quantitative, qualitative or mixed descriptions of exposure to advertisements of gambling in A&Y.
A literature search was carried out through the research database PsycINFO and Web of Science (WoS, which include WoS core, Medline and Scielo), restricted to articles in Spanish and English before January 1st, 2020. Search words included: (“gambling” or “pathological gambling”) and (“advertis*” or “publicity”) in any field, filtered by age group selected (“adolescents” or “youth”) and (“empirical study”).
Two members of the research team screened the articles that fit the criteria of the research question starting from the title and subsequently looking at the abstract. Additionally, the references of the selected articles were revised (and those of the studies not included, such as revisions or meta-analyses) to finalise the search. Figure 2 illustrates this process. Two other members of the research team read the work and recorded the characteristics of the studies in a form (see Table 1 and 2). Any differences in the selection of the studies, as well as in the characteristic summaries were evaluated and agreed upon.
To analyse risk bias, the work was evaluated in its methodological quality with the CRF scale of McMaster (Law et al., 1998; Letts et al., 2007). In each case the form corresponding to the type of study, quantitative or qualitative, was used.
The results were synthesised by means of a participant recount. The studies included were grouped by interest theme (type, quantity and contents), showing relevant results for each of these. Different areas were considered separately: possible ways in which advertising influences gaming; quantity or volume of advertisements emitted; quantity or volume of advertising received; contents of advertising; and types of advertising.
Results
From the initial sample including 112 studies, 31 fit inclusion criteria (Figure 2), including 12.979 A&Y (samples ranging from 20 to 4617 participants). More than half were men; age range between 5 and 37 years old. 1056 advertisements, gambling websites and interviews with marketing managers of gambling companies (ranging from 19 to 367) were evaluated. The majority of the studies came from Australia, but there were also samples from Canada, Germany, Ethiopia, USA, Israel, UK and Spain (236 participants).
The methodological quality of the studies, according to the CRF, was moderate to excellent, with an average of 13.4 out of 16 points (SD = 2.1). The measurements oscillated between 8 and 16 points, with a single study below 10 points. The quality of the quantitative studies (M = 13.9; SD = 1.7) was somewhat superior to that of the qualitative ones (M = 12; SD = 2.7).
Table 1 summarises the characteristics and results of the studies with a sample of A&Y. Table 2, shows studies on advertising and promotions of gambling.
Table 1: Analysis of Contents of Advertising and its Effects. Studies Included in the Evaluation Comprising Samples of A&Y.
Discussion
The results are discussed according to quantity, type and content of advertising.
Quantity of advertising
Gambling companies do not usually publish the amount of advertising they emit. The alternative, systematic tracking of advertising in communication methods, is costly and in practice impossible due to the indirect effects of advertising. Thus, many A&Y perceive advertising of sports bets in settings not designed for betting (Deans et al., 2017). As a consequence of the quantity of advertisements, 96% of A&Y acknowledge having seen publicity of gambling on television (TV) and 71% received gambling spams by email (Derevensky et al., 2010).
The majority of A&Y are exposed to gambling advertising on TV, internet and sports events, weekly or fortnightly (McMullan et al., 2012), for which part of this advertising is directed to A&Y, including to those younger than the legal age to gamble, sometimes due to the inability to restrict contents to this young audience (Gainsbury et al., 2015; Kim et al., 2013).
Being exposed to advertising does not imply that this is “attended to''. As a consequence, some studies look at its recall rate, finding that people who take part in gambling appear to have a better memory of it (Pitt et al., 2017b), perhaps due to greater interest and attention paid to advertisements. Through self-reports (Deverensky et al., 2010; McMullan et al., 2012) it was found that A&Y were familiar with the content of gambling advertisements, publicity had affected them and they had grasped the message. The majority of A&Y recognised brands of betting houses associated with a promotion (Nyemcsok et al., 2018), with greater recall found in men, increasing in “superfans” (Djohari et al., 2019).
A&Y were critical of advertising contents, pointing out that they are biased, exaggerated, pushing people to gamble through the use of tricks, with the intent to deceive, etc. A third of gambling advertisements were ignored, not understood or rejected. The youngest (13-14) were most distanced from colour, style or aspects considered appealing in advertisements and less prone to associating gambling with friendship, economical advantage, amusement and entertainment. Although 42% of adolescents acknowledged having seen at least one betting brand during a sports event, they did not believe that advertising would affect their gambling behaviour (Hing et al., 2014).
A minority of A&Y (10-15%) does not share this critical sense. Some saw themselves as taking part in gambling, even before the legal age to bet (McMullan et al., 2012). Men and A&Y with gambling problems perceive and accept more publicity and they acknowledge that gambling advertisements make them want to try and bet (Derevensky et al., 2010). The memory of the exposure to advertisements is a significant predictor of gambling behaviour in A&Y (Fried et al., 2010; Hayer et al., 2018), especially in young people over the age of 18 (Clemens et al., 2017) and it also predicts the change from simulated bets to gambling with real money (Hayer et al., 2018).
Types of advertising
Advertising is diverse, including advertisements in media channels, participation vouchers, promotions, sports sponsorships, clothes with publicity etc. The majority of the studies considered in this review investigated the content of advertising in general, considering different types of bets and analysing their diffusion channels (Kim et al., 2013; McMullan & Miller, 2010; Sklar & Derevensky, 2010). TV, radio, cinema, magazines and newspapers are widely used. To a lesser extent, although still relevant, advertisements were received on digital displays and through sports teams (Djohari et al., 2019). Advertisements on the Internet are becoming increasingly frequent and more specific to their target audience and game. Thomas et al. (2018) found that 96.4% of their participants had generally received adverts on multimedia platforms. Derevensky et al., (2010) point out that 93% of adolescents acknowledge having seen promotions for betting games as pop-ups and 61% received unwanted emails promoting betting. The use of Social Media (SM), such as Facebook or Twitter, is of relevance in incrementing positive attitudes (O'Loughlin & Blaszczynski, 2018), or in broadcasting adverts (Gainsbury et al., 2015). Additionally, advertisements appear as insertions in free gaming apps for mobile phones (Rubio, 2018). Blaszczynski, Parke, Harris, Parkes, and Rigbye (2014) highlight that SM will play an increasingly important role in the gambling marketing, seeking emotional reactions which lead to the players sharing this information in their private networks.
Although advertising of gambling has restricted time frames, advertisements or sponsorships appear at any time during sports transmissions (McMullan et al., 2012; Thomas, et al., 2018), limiting the effectiveness of time restrictions and child protection. In Spain, 17 of the 25 most followed transmissions for children (4-12 years old) on television in 2013 were sports events after 8 pm. Greater exposure to these advertisements, in addition to the direct effect, increases the normalisation of these games and the message that gambling is acceptable and it does not need protection for A&Y.
Advertising in retail points can attract A&Y to gambling locations, facilitating gambling in an impulsive and immediate manner.
Sports sponsorship is an effective form of indirect publicity, which helps form a positive attitude towards the gambling business and its products, associating activities potentially harmful with healthy events and images. Sponsorships allow products that are general objects of business promotion, such as sports t-shirts, to include gambling advertising. In some cases, the name of the sports club includes that of the gambling business. Djohari et al. (2019) found that t-shirts and sponsorships were the format in which brands were best recognised. This exposure and normalisation entailed higher direct risk for A&Y, in particular for men.
The use of promotional items with the name or logo of a gambling business is frequent, which appears to be an efficient way of getting the brand known (Nyemcsok et al., 2018), in the same way as indirect adverts, associating gambling with positive aspects of life (elegance, good living, humour…). This is especially evident in the use, each time more frequent, of celebrities, who through vicar learning of A&Y have a great influence on them, giving more credibility to the product and promoting more positive attitudes towards it.
Between the incentives to bet, financial offers stand out. Hing et al., (2017) show up to 15 types of economic incentives, such as registration offers, “happy hours”, offers for mobile phone bets and vouchers to bet, improvements on probabilities of winning, paying winnings even if not won, refund offers etc. These incentives used to be subject to numerous terms and conditions, redacted in a complex language (especially in the case of vouchers to buy, sometimes without fulfilling the basic requisites for an informed choice). The vouchers (free money to open an account, or duplicating the balance paid by the player) are also perceived as influential and appealing to A&Y (Deans, et al., 2017; Guerrero-Solé et al., 2017; Rubio, 2018). They appear to be the most effective strategy to motivate the participation in betting (Deans et al., 2017), and to begin online gambling (Kim et al., 2017), although this method does not appear to incentivize client loyalty. Amongst players looking for treatment, a significant proportion increased their gambling behaviour with voucher offers requiring playing before making any profits.
Other marketing strategies have been considered, such as simulated games (web applications or SM which stimulate poker games, roulette or gaming machines). Almost a third of A&Y has access to these simulated bets, without the restriction of betting games (King et al., 2014), finding them in some occasions as inserts in video games, as part of the narration of the history of the game or as forms of improving gaming (“loot boxes”). The results showed that the use of simulated games is a relevant predictor of real gambling within a year in A&Y (Dussault et al., 2017; King et al., 2014; Hayer et al., 2018).
Advertising Content
McMullan et al. (2012) highlight three themes: winning money, presenting gambling as a normal everyday activity and promise of entertainment. Advertising intends to normalise gambling as a leisure activity, and it highlights possible profits which would change the life of the gambler. These could well be economical profits, change in social status or quality of life, by gaining access to a more glamorous world (Sklar & Derevensky, 2010).
To normalise gambling, advertising places it in a wider social context, together with news and events, related or not to gambling (Gainsbury et al., 2016). Thus, gambling appears as a form of entertainment or diversion to share with friends, associating gambling with friendship and social cohesion (Deans et al., 2016), without giving relevance to economical profits or losses. Gambling can be seen as an accepted and legitimate social activity (Pitt et al., 2016), providing it with recognition since it is paired with culturally relevant events such as sports, emphasising the relation between loyalty to a sports team and betting in its favour. This normalisation of gambling advertising appears to come into effect, since constructs such as “sense of coherence” (Antonovsky, 1979), which predict an attitude of rejection towards advertising of tobacco or alcohol, do not predict rejection of gambling (Fried et al., 2010).
However, the most perceived messages are those that reference gambling as an activity that brings substantial prices (Gainsbury et al., 2016), highlighting the concept of easy money (high winning possibilities, “it can happen to you”). Furthermore, it can be noted that betting is entertaining, it begins with a lifestyle without worries, which does not require the efforts of studying or working. Gambling is associated, through words, signs, myths and symbols, to the image of “winning spirit”. This publicity is rarely compensated with effective information on the negative consequences of gambling. The messages of responsible gambling, although present in the majority of gambling companies' websites, are perceived as inefficient, not very eye-catching and not very believable. In other areas, such as SM, there are almost no messages of responsible gambling amongst the published content (Abarbanel et al., 2017; Hing et al., 2017; McMullan y Miller, 2010).
Since the main target of this kind of advertising is a young man (Kim et al., 2013), it is important to note the presence of advertisements showing a sexualised image of women, associated with a gambling and betting environment (Deans et al., 2016; Hing et al., 2017; McMullan & Miller, 2010). Perhaps due to this Nyemcsok et al. (2018) found that women were less sensitive to promotions and advertisements, arguing moral justifications.
Additionally, advertising offers strategies and leads to bet “better”, with the intent of increasing the players' perception of control, a relevant factor in their implication in gambling (Deans et al., 2017). These recommendations are centred in promoting complex bets, instead of simpler ones, in a way that makes it difficult for gamblers to form a realistic opinion on their odds to win (Newall et al., 2017). In other cases, the wording of the terms in which such promotions were funded were obscure, hard to find and written in legalistic language. Some gambling platforms advertise themselves as having “educational contents” or as “betting schools” (Kim et al., 2013). In summary, strategies that make a rational approach to gambling difficult are employed, in particular making it difficult for gamblers to identify the real odds to win.
Ultimately, advertisements that generate a greater impact in A&Y are those that result striking and visually appealing; those that offer free money (bonuses) and give rise to expectations of control over the game, showing it as a test of skills; those that are shown repeatedly in channels such as television; those that offer some kind of simulated online game; and those that appeal to gambling as a normalised activity, associating it with sports, with famous people and with sports idols.
Limitations and Conclusion
Gambling involves a complex reality, evolving and adapting to legislations and social trends. Perhaps the results drawn from older studies in this revision, which includes research from the past 10 years, can have now a limited validity.
The majority of the results from the studies revised stem from self-reports. Moreover, advertising of gambling was considered in general terms, nonetheless, it is possible that advertising or its effects are specific to the type of bet.
Most of the research studies revised correspond to just a few countries, in particular to Australia and Canada, with barely any studies on Spanish samples. Due to the differences, just as much legal as social, as well as of accessibility of gambling, these biases could limit the possibility of generalizing the results.
The lack of studies in Spain should be noted, especially considering the relevance of the gambling sector. More studies are needed to obtain an updated and consistent image of gambling advertising. This knowledge would allow the evaluation of policies oriented towards maintaining balance between the benefits of gambling, the promotion of responsible gambling and the protection of A&Y.
