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Abstract
Background: The scale and complexity of British gambling advertising has increased in recent years. ‘Live-odds’ TV gambling adverts broadcast the odds on very specific, complex, gambles during sporting events (e.g. in soccer, ‘Wayne Rooney to score the first goal, 5-to-1,’ or, ‘Chelsea to win 2-1, 10-to-1’). These gambles were analyzed from a behavioral scientific perspective (the intersection of economics and psychology).
Method: A mixed methods design combining observational and experimental data. A content analysis showed that live-odds adverts from two months of televised English Premier League matches were biased towards complex, rather than simple, gambles. Complex gambles were also associated with high bookmaker profit margins. A series of experiments then quantified the rationality of participants’ forecasts across key gambles from the content analysis (Total N = 1467 participants across five Experiments).
Results: Soccer fans rarely formed rational probability judgments for the complex events dominating gambling advertising, but were much better at estimating simple events.
Conclusions: British gambling advertising is concentrated on the complex products that mislead consumers the most. Behavioral scientific findings are relevant to the active public debate about gambling.
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by an early career engagement grant from the Scottish Institute for Research in Economics. Thanks to Anam Hassan and Lucia Newall for help with data collection. Thanks to David Comerford, Nathan Critchlow, Eimear Crowe, and Liam Delaney for their many helpful suggestions.
Disclosure statement
The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of this article.
Notes
1 Where bookmaker profit margin = (sum of probabilities – 1)/sum of probabilities.