Skin in the game – Erroneous beliefs and emotional involvement as correlates of athletes' sports betting behavior and problems

Background and aimsThe sports betting market has been growing rapidly over the last years, as have reports of problematic gambling behavior associated with betting. Due to the well-documented gambling problems of famous athletes and the betting supportive nature of many sports-related environments, athletes have been highlighted as a potential group at-risk for problematic sports betting. However, there currently remains a lack of research on individual-level athlete-specific risk-factors or mechanisms that might contribute to the development and perpetuation of betting-related problems. Here, we examine the influence of two potential risk-factors on sports betting behavior and problems: erroneous beliefs and athletes' emotional involvement.Methods201 athletes with different levels of expertise completed a newly developed scale to assess both factors. Participants were sampled from the general German population, predominantly male (83.08%) and on average 29.52 (SD = 11.05) years old. We use principal components analysis to detect patterns of covariation, potentially due to the proposed underlying latent factors, and regression analyses to test associations of these factors with betting behavior and problems.ResultsWe find that athletes' emotional involvement was strongly associated with betting problems whereas erroneous beliefs were not. However, distorted cognitions/beliefs were associated with higher volumes and more frequent betting activities.Discussion and ConclusionsThis might contribute to betting problems in the long run. These results highlight athletes' emotional involvement and erroneous beliefs as potential targets for future intervention and prevention efforts.

Online Gambling Activity, Pay-to-Win Payments, Motivation to Gamble and Coping Strategies as Predictors of Gambling Disorder Among e-sports Bettors

Research on esports activity usually captures it from the perspective of involvement in gaming. This study presents the results of the first research in Poland (N = 438) on esports betting (ESB). ESB is compared to other forms of e-gambling and involvement in pay-to-win games. The aim was to build a predictive model of gambling disorder among people betting on esports. A predictive model of gambling disorder based on ordinal regression was built, including sociodemographic variables, involvement in esports betting, involvement in other Internet activities connected to ESB, as well as psychological variables—motivation to gamble and coping strategies. The results showed that gambling disorder among esports bettors is associated with time spent on one game session, placing other forms of online gambling bets once a week or more often, and paying in pay-to-win games. Gambling disorder was also predicted by escape coping strategies and lower engaged strategies as well as financial and coping motivation to bet on esports results. The results show the crucial role of psychological factors (motivation, coping) in the development of esports betting addiction. Esports betting is an activity associated with both gambling and gaming—involvement in both activities explains the development of ESB addiction. There is a need for further research focused on the specificity of esports betting behavior to discover the direction of links among gaming, gambling, and esports gambling.

Request-a-bet sports betting products indicate patterns of bettor preference and bookmaker profits

Background and aims Request-a-bet services are a modern gambling product delivered via the social network Twitter, which allow sports bettors to design custom bets. The public nature of Twitter data provided a unique opportunity to investigate patterns of bettor preference and the bookmaker profit margin in soccer, the UK’s favorite sport. Methods Two multi-method studies. Twitter users’ engagement with request-a-bet services was monitored unobtrusively (n = 1,406), meaning that potential patterns across users’ requests could be observed, and the bookmaker profit margin could be estimated. Twitter users were also surveyed directly (n = 55), providing self-report measures of request-a-bet usage. Results Twitter users requested bets with an average potential payoff of £56.5 per £1 risked (median = £9). Overall, 9.7% of requested bets paid-off, but these were mostly bets at short odds. This meant that requests yielded a high bookmaker profit margin of 43.7% (roughly eight times higher than current margins in conventional soccer bets), which increased to 74.6% for bets at longer odds. Requested bets also tended to involve star players from the best teams. Finally, 92.7% of surveyed Twitter users reported placing at least one bet via request-a-bet services (mean = 44.4 bets). Discussion and conclusions Researchers can use request-a-bet products to increase their understanding of sports betting behavior. Sports bettors should be given information about how much higher the bookmaker profit margin can be in modern sports bets compared to the conventional sports bets that they may be more familiar with.

Betting on intuitive longshots

Sports betting markets are a laboratory for studying probabilistic judgments in the field. Here we present a study of a new gambling product that allows customers to easily design custom bets via Twitter: a “request-a-bet” service. We use large volumes of Twitter data to demonstrate that soccer bettors use request-a-bet services to create “intuitive longshots” – combinations of (individually) representative events with high potential winnings. Pairing these requests with historical data illustrated that these requested bets would lead to substantially higher losses than conventional soccer bets. Compared to conventional sports betting products, these preferences are associated with two ordinarily contrasting cognitive biases: the overweighting of small probabilities, and the representativeness of individual events. Moreover, these results suggest that more datasets of actual sports betting behavior should be shared with researchers to fully investigate the welfare effects of novel sports betting products.

Subjectivism

This essay discusses subjective probability—its foundations, justification, and relation to other subjects, such as decision theory and confirmation theory. Various forms of subjectivism (the belief in subjective probability) are described, and distinguished from non-subjectivist approaches. Two broad approaches to justifying the laws of probability on subjectivist grounds are then discussed: (a) pragmatic approaches, based on betting behavior, with associated Dutch book arguments, or (more broadly) pragmatic approaches based on decision and preference theory, with its representation theorems; and (b) non-pragmatic (epistemic) approaches, with arguments based on calibration and gradational accuracy. These various arguments are assessed, and their scope and limitations spelled out in detail. Finally, the relation of subjective probability to the confirmation of scientific theories is discussed, focusing on the problem of old evidence, and its various proposed solutions.