What is the verbal message of sports betting companies

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The Verbal Message of Sports Betting Companies

As the world of sports continues to evolve with each passing season, the influence of sports betting companies on the industry has become increasingly noticeable. These entities have established a significant presence in various sports markets, promoting their services through a carefully crafted verbal message that attracts both seasoned gamblers and newcomers alike.

Emphasizing Excitement and Entertainment: One of the core messages conveyed by sports betting companies is the promise of heightened excitement and entertainment for fans. By placing bets on different outcomes, customers are encouraged to immerse themselves further in the games they love, creating a more engaging viewing experience.

Empowering Fans with Knowledge: Another key verbal message is the empowerment of fans through the acquisition of knowledge about sports and odds. Betting companies often tout the importance of analyzing statistics, trends, and team performance to make informed decisions, positioning themselves as facilitators of a deeper understanding of the sports world.

Offering Potential Rewards: Sports betting companies frequently highlight the potential rewards and incentives for customers who participate in their platforms. The prospect of winning money or other prizes serves as a motivating factor for many individuals, driving them to explore the world of sports betting further.

Promoting Responsible Gambling: Despite the allure of potential rewards, these companies also emphasize the importance of responsible gambling. Through messages about setting limits, monitoring behavior, and seeking help when needed, they aim to foster a safe and enjoyable betting environment for all participants.

Overall, the verbal message of sports betting companies revolves around creating an immersive and engaging experience for fans while promoting responsible behavior. By leveraging these elements effectively, these entities have successfully integrated themselves into the fabric of the sports industry, offering a unique avenue for fans to interact with the games they love.

In-Play Sports Betting: a Scoping Study

What is the impact of sports betting on the economy? Legalizing sports betting won't just bring the law in line with American attitudes and desires – it will also deliver powerful economic benefits, possibly generating $8 billion in local taxes, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, and adding $22.4 billion to the gross domestic product, according to new a ...

What is the public opinion of sports betting? A majority of Americans polled, 55 percent, support legalization of gambling on professional sports, compared with only 33 percent who object. The strongest support for legalizing sports betting is among Americans between 40 and 49 years old, followed closely by those 18 to 29 years old.

Is there science behind sports betting? As went enter sports betting era, experts say the old adage “The house always wins” is still true. That's based on scientific and analytical data that almost ensures the oddsmakers will cash in on every bet you can imagine. Those who choose to bet will obviously win here and there.

How does sports betting benefit society? Increased tax revenue from sports betting can improve public services, including schools, roads, and healthcare facilities, benefiting the broader community.

What is the goal of sports betting? Sports betting is simply the act of risking money on the outcome of a sporting event or any aspect of a sporting event. The goal is to turn a profit. Sports betting includes wagers on the moneyline, spread, Over/Under, parlays, props and futures.

What is the issue with sports betting? Physical And Mental Health Issues Sports betting addiction can harm one's physical and psychological health. Individuals may experience stress-related illnesses such as high blood pressure, depression, and anxiety.

How does gambling impact people and society? Studies suggest that pathological gamblers make up about 1 percent of American adults. The social ills associated with problem gamblers are widespread and often go beyond an addition to gambling. Problems with gambling can lead to bankruptcy, crime, domestic abuse, and even suicide.

What is a bookie slang? The term “bookie“ is slang for “bookmaker. “ A bookie places bets for customers, usually on sporting events. They also set odds and pay out winnings on behalf of other people.

The dark side of the legalization of sports betting in the US becomes apparent

This research suggests that marketing plays a strong role in the normalisation of gambling in sports. This has the potential to increase the risks and subsequent harms associated with these products. Legislators must begin to consider the cultural lag between an evolving gambling landscape, which supports sophisticated marketing strategies, and effective policies and practices which aim to reduce and prevent gambling harm.

Gambling can cause significant health and social harms for individuals, their families, and communities [ 1 , 2 ]. While academic research has traditionally focused on the harms associated with problem or pathological levels of gambling, research now suggests that gambling harm may also occur for those with low or moderate levels of gambling, with the burdens associated with gambling harms now comparable with those associated with alcohol misuse and major depression [ 3 ].

Each year, approximately , Australian adults experience gambling-related harm or are at moderate risk of experiencing harm [ 4 ]. Traditional research paradigms in gambling have predominantly focused on individualised models to explain why some individuals develop problematic or pathological levels of gambling, with personal responsibility approaches offered as key harm minimisation strategies [ 5 ].

However, newer research has sought to understand the broader socio-cultural, environmental, and commercial determinants of gambling harm, and the broader range of policy and regulatory strategies that may be used to prevent harm [ 6 — 9 ]. Despite increasing concern from academics, legislators, and community groups about the increasing proliferation of marketing for gambling products and services [ 10 — 14 ], very limited research has explored how marketing strategies may influence gambling attitudes and consumption intentions and the range of strategies that may be used to reduce the risks posed by marketing to different population subgroups.

Australia arguably has one of the most liberalised and intensive gambling environments in the world [ 2 ], with sports betting via online bookmakers a rapidly expanding segment of the Australian gambling market [ 15 , 16 ]. Official statistics have reported an increase in sports betting expenditure in Australia [ 17 , 18 ] and increasing profit margins for some online bookmakers [ 19 ].

However, this has also coincided with an increase in the number of individuals presenting to clinics for help with problems with this form of gambling, particularly young men [ 20 ]. Recent research suggests that approximately three quarters Further, recent research suggests that there exists a range of factors in both online and land-based environments including but not limited to accessibility, the role of alcohol, and promotions that may contribute to risky sports betting behaviours [ 9 ].

There has also been a significant increase in the amount of marketing for sports betting products in Australia [ 22 ], including significant increases in advertising spend by online bookmakers [ 23 ]. Marketing strategies for sports betting extend beyond advertisements on free to air television and also include more contemporary social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook which often transcend advertising regulations [ 7 ], as well as commercial sponsorship agreements with sporting codes, stadiums, broadcasters, and individual clubs [ 10 , 24 , 25 ].

Research suggests that young men are the target market for sports betting companies, with a range of marketing and promotional strategies used to both appeal to and reach this key audience segment [ 8 ]. Further, some young men have reported they feel targeted and bombarded by sports betting advertising [ 28 ]. More broadly, research into the impact of gambling advertising indicates that it may trigger impulses to gamble, may increase already high levels of gambling and may make it more difficult for problem gamblers in particular, to gamble less or not gamble at all [ 29 , 30 ].

For example, researchers have found that sports betting advertising used during sporting matches stimulates a range of positive, negative, and neutral affects in sports betters [ 32 ]. Researchers have also demonstrated that specific forms of marketing promotions such as inducements may be particularly influential in stimulating problematic betting behaviours [ 33 ]. Marketing research also demonstrates how advertisers may seek to develop upon existing cultural symbols, behaviours, and contexts, with an aim of embedding their product within these behaviours and creating new subcultures and identities associated with that product [ 34 — 36 ].

Researchers have partly documented this process in relation to sports betting advertising. They have analysed the extent to which gambling industry marketing seeks to align sports betting with the culturally valued aspects of being a sports fan—including mateship, support for your team, fan loyalty, thrill, winning, and power [ 8 ].

Deans et al. However, few studies have sought to explore how marketing strategies may influence the gambling attitudes and consumption intentions of populations. What is the verbal message of sports betting companies Utilising in-depth qualitative research with young male sports gamblers 20—37 years , the key target market of betting companies, we aimed to explore the role of marketing in betting behaviours, as well as the range of strategies that may be used to minimise the potential harms associated with marketing.

The research was guided by four research questions. Do specific forms of promotions encourage young men to gamble more frequently and on events that they would not otherwise bet on. Are there specific strategies that may have the potential to reduce or prevent the risks or harms posed by the marketing for these products. The results presented in this paper were part of a broader study investigating the sports betting attitudes and behaviours of young men [ 9 , 31 ].

The research used a constructivist grounded theory CGT approach [ 37 ], acknowledging the active co-creation of knowledge that exists between researchers and research participants. Individuals each have their own socially constructed reality, and the research findings therefore represent a collation of interpretations of multiple lived realities, mutually constructed by the researchers and participants in this study [ 38 ].

Such an approach considers and values the opinions and experiences of all participants, while attempting to reconstruct their experiences in the most faithful way possible [ 39 ]. Participants were recruited using purposive [ 40 ] and theoretical [ 41 ] sampling techniques. All participants were either current or recent sports bettors, with the exception of one participant who identified as experiencing previous problems with sports betting.

While this participant no longer gambled on sports or any other product, the research team chose to include him given his personal experiences with sports betting and to ensure a range of experiences were included in the study sample. We employed a number of strategies to recruit participants including posts on social media Twitter and Facebook , advertisements on gambling forums, flyers in gyms and in gym newsletters , and a newspaper article with information about the study.

As the study progressed, we relied on snowball techniques to recruit the remainder of participants. Potential participants were given information about the study and gave their verbal consent prior to completing the interview. Semi-structured, audio-taped interviews lasting between 30 and 60 min were conducted with each participant.

The majority of interviews were conducted by author 1, with some conducted by author 2. Demographic information, including age, occupation, highest level of education, and postcode were collected. Recruitment for the study was stopped when the researchers were confident of a diversity of experiences and opinions to illustrate a number of constructs associated with our research questions and theoretical lens [ 44 ].

Initial data coding, analyses, and interpretation was conducted by authors 1 and 2. We used open-coding techniques to identify narratives that specifically related to the extent and content of sports betting marketing in each of the transcripts. We read and re-read each transcript and listened to the audio of each interview , employing a constant comparative method [ 41 ] to identify the similarities and differences between each interview and to inductively categorise the data [ 45 ].

This allowed for emerging themes of inquiry to be identified and guided how best to explore these in subsequent interviews. The general characteristics of the sample are presented in Table 1. Most of the marketing strategies for sports betting mentioned by participants were not in environments specifically designed for gambling.

Rather, they included television advertising during both regular programming and during sports; at sporting matches; on radio; billboards; public transport, and as pop-ups on social media sites. In gambling environments, participants mentioned that they had seen advertising on mobile sports betting apps, and within clubs and pubs, which included sports bars, and specific betting facilities.

Others stated that the constant exposure to marketing for sports betting products also removed the stigma traditionally associated with betting by creating a perception that gambling on sports was a normal activity:. Participants described the impact of saturated marketing on the normalisation of betting in sports.

However, others, including some at higher risk levels of gambling harm, described the impact of constantly seeing promotions for inducements and incentives to gamble. The following moderate risk gambler directly attributed the embedding of gambling within sporting cultures to the constant push of gambling products and services throughout sporting matches:.

Similarly, the following participant described the familiarity of seeing very specific promotions for sports betting products when viewing sports events. In particular, he described the specific informational campaigns run by betting companies which were designed to teach individuals about the range of different ways to engage in betting via mobile technologies:.

All that stuff is in the marketing. Participants described the role of sponsorship deals between industry and sporting codes as creating a symbolic alignment between gambling and sports. Several participants described the way in which implicit endorsement of betting by teams and codes contributed to the normalisation of gambling:. Every team is sponsored by a gambling agency.

Participants described the subtle ways in which marketing for sports betting had also become embedded within sports-based commentary before and during sporting matches, as well as in sports-based entertainment shows. Others described how broadcasters would cross to a bookmaker for the odds of the game—not only on the match outcome but also on individual players and specific statistics associated with the game.

Some stated that this changed the terminology and discourse associated with the match, with bookmakers and sports commentators encouraging fans to view the match through a gambling lens:. Most participants stated that crossing to bookmakers throughout the match had become such a normal part of the game that they rarely thought to challenge the presence of these forms of promotions:.

You have your commentators reviewing games and they talk about the odds and who is favourite to the extent whereby they sometimes cross over to someone who gives you the odds on who is trending well. I think it becomes so in your face that we just accept it as normal now. For example, one participant described how watching sports and following a team was no longer solely about emotion and passion but was also about backing their team through betting:.

Not only [do you] back them with your emotions, you back them financially. The majority of participants believed that young men were the key target market for gambling companies and that marketing had played an important role in shaping the gambling identities of young men. Participants described a range of marketing appeal strategies that they believed were particularly influential in shaping gambling as a part of sports fan behaviour.

The most common was the use of appeals and imagery that centred upon peer belonging and mateship. A number of participants spoke about how advertisements sought to align what they already valued and appreciated in sports, with that of betting. For example, the following participant described how effective he thought sports betting marketing strategies were in linking gambling to friendship and comradery.

Some participants stated that they could relate and identify their own relationships and betting behaviours to those portrayed in advertisements:. The following comment suggests that these marketing tactics created a strong positive cultural narrative for young men about the role of gambling in their peer groups and their collective identities surrounding sport:.

Like you can be the cool guy that won money and this is what you should be doing - you should be gambling, you should be doing this. Participants argued that it was extremely problematic that individuals could not watch sports without being exposed to the marketing for sports betting and felt frustrated that sports broadcasts were overloaded with betting promotions.

A few described switching off the television when they felt too pressured to gamble because of betting promotions:. If you actually analyse it, the value is there. I consider it a smart and reasonably safe, more safe bet. Participants also believed that they could maximise their winnings through large sign-up bonus bets.

Many conceptualised these incentives as free money, with these types of inducements being the most influential mechanism in stimulating the opening of betting accounts. Many described that while they initially thought they would open accounts, use the bets, and then walk away, this was the first step into long-term patterns of gambling:.

But obviously I never walked away. What is buy points in sports betting However, other participants believed that bonus bets and a competitive gambling environment meant that they could take advantage of deals between bookmakers. There was evidence that inducements stimulated some participants to continue gambling and to gamble when they otherwise would not have gambled.

For example, even though the following participant knew that inducements were a clever marketing tactic, they still influenced his decisions to place bets and how much he would gamble:. Some specific incentives created a perception amongst participants that they were more in control of their gambling. Some believed that placing bets on these players gave them a greater degree of control over the outcome of the markets that they gambled on and that incentives would protect their money even if the bet was unsuccessful:.

Probably the cash back ones. You get your money back. Others described the impact of inducements tied to the emotion associated with large sporting events. This was particularly the case for individuals with moderate- or high-risk levels of gambling. Another stated that push notifications via his mobile phone, which offered a range of promotions, led him to bet more than he normally would have done during the State of Origin NRL match:.

The Origin a couple of weeks ago is a good example. And with those particular games I certainly bet a lot more then what I normally would, based on those specials and promotions. This study sought to investigate how the marketing of sports betting products may influence betting attitudes and consumption behaviours which ultimately may lead to harm.

The study also sought to consider potential strategies to reduce the risks posed by these marketing strategies for young male sports fans. Figure 1 provides a theoretical model of how marketing strategies may influence a shift in the cultural meanings associated with gambling and sports, as well as the distinct promotional factors that may influence gambling consumption behaviours.

It is clear from this study that most participants recall the marketing for sports betting in environments which are not specifically designed for gambling, and this was most notably the case during live broadcasts of Australian sports. This is the phase of cultural alignment that McCracken [ 34 ] described as taking cultural meanings within the social world, and applying them to products.

Marketing for sports betting products is no longer confined to specific gambling environments such as bookmaker websites or mobile applications and gambling venues. Rather, the marketing for these products has entered everyday community and media spaces, which have not traditionally been aligned with gambling.

We would argue this is increasingly similar to betting being core to the experience of horse racing. Marketing strategies that may shift the cultural meanings associated with gambling and sports. Legend: Theoretical model of how marketing strategies may influence a shift in the cultural meanings associated with gambling and sports, as well as the distinct promotional factors that may influence gambling consumption behaviours.

However, it is not only the placement of sports betting advertisements within sports but the saturated nature of these promotions that has exacerbated a cultural alignment between betting and sports and the subsequent risks associated with betting. This raises an important issue for policy makers and regulators in relation to the prevention of harm. While marketing for some forms of gambling e.

Toronto Raptors center Jontay Porter, a two-way contract player who has only just made it to the league after a series of injuries curtailed a promising career, is under investigation for a series of prop bets being placed against his stats. Prop bets are player-specific, so if a player achieves a certain number of rebounds or scores a certain amount of three-pointers, those bets come in regardless of the score in the game itself.

While it is one thing to bet on LeBron James or Steph Curry hitting 30 points, it is another to bet on a largely anonymous player and the high volume of bets on Porter has set off the alarms. Porter, brother of Michael Porter Jnr. While it is unknown who placed the bets, the worst-case scenario is that Porter bet on himself, which damages the integrity of the sport.

Porter and Ohtani are not the first examples of betting causing issues in US sports, with baseball no stranger to scandal. What is the verbal message of sports betting companies In , nine members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of throwing the World Series at the behest of a gambling syndicate, while baseball legend Pete Rose became infamous for betting on baseball games and even on his own team to lose.

Basketball is no stranger to scandal either, with referee Tim Donaghy under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI for betting on games he was officiating, something he later admitted and served a prison sentence for. Betting scandals are not merely restricted to these two sports however, with NFL player Calvin Ridley suspended for a full season in for betting on NFL games.

While these scandals relate to the integrity of the game and can call into question the results, a far darker side may be emerging. By promoting sports betting through various partnerships, US sports leagues suggest to fans that gambling and betting on sports games is a fun pastime. While most fans may place the odd wager, some will bet nightly and potentially run up ruinous debts.

The impact on players and coaches is already being felt. Cleveland Cavaliers coach J. While players have said the verbal abuse they get on court has changed to include comments about gambling, and how their performances have affected bets placed, this has so far remained at a verbal level. What many will fear is if this escalates to something beyond verbal abuse.

With money at stake, the challenge to remain level-headed in the face of losses will be great, and leagues and teams must take their fair share of accountability. Professional leagues forcefully distanced themselves from betting, even refusing to play games in Las Vegas, where it was legal and popular.

Then the Supreme Court opened the door to legalized sports wagering in , and a sea change ensued. Fans rushed into the nascent market, and the pro leagues quickly pivoted. If fans were opening their now-virtual wallets to spend money on games, the leagues wanted a piece of the action. Teams now have partnerships with casinos and build their arenas next to them. Announcers, long allergic to any references to betting, now commonly cite wagering information during broadcasts.

But an unintended consequence of this new relationship comes out of the mouths of increasingly irked fans. But, you know, I just go out there and try to play the game. Cleveland Cavaliers coach J. You see guys talking about it all the time. People bet on silly things on a daily basis. I get it.

A league spokesman said that incidents of fan comments toward players and team staff about gambling were not more prevalent than other fan misbehavior at this point, but it is something the league continues to monitor. Prop bets are wagers on parts of a game that might not have anything to do with the outcome. How long will it take for the national anthem to be sung?

How many turnovers will a certain player have in the first half. How many total rebounds will there be. Prop bets have been the subject of two recent incidents that raised questions about whether basketball players were under the sway of gamblers. Haliburton elaborated on his comments in a recent interview with The Athletic.