Australian politicians thought they had already identified what was causing problem gambling in the shape of the evil demon of the flashing gambling machine world, the pokie.
Experts at an Australian University have added to gambling’s woes by giving Internet sports betting a shot in the ass.
Professor of psychology at the University of Sydney, Alex Blaszczynski, gave the opinion that those sitting at a PC have replaced people sitting wiling away the hours in front of a pokie machine.
“Today we are seeing many young men who are losing large sums of money from betting on sports over the Internet,” he said.
“They can literally lose a fortune without leaving the comfort of their own home.”
It followed figures being released that have shown the University’s gambling clinics see a 70% increase in internet sports betting clients from 2008-9 to 2010-11.
“With more and more people gaining access to higher internet speeds and wireless internet via their smart phones, you can gamble anytime and anywhere,” Professor Blaszczynski said.
We can’t dispute the evidence that is there in black and white but the fact problem gamblers are moving across different mediums doesn’t mean that there are more of them; it just means they’re migrating to newer, more modern channels.
Clinical psychologist Christopher Hunt added: “It’s difficult to watch most kinds of sporting matches these days without being made aware of the prices that various outlets are giving for bets.”
The UK Gambling Prevalence survey created enough scare mongering over on the other side of the world and you can imagine that it could easily be a similar case in Australia if this hits the main stream.
