Page 4 - Healthcare News Sep/Oct 2022

The MGM Sports Lounge was designed to enhance the sports viewing — and eventually gambling — experience.
In on the Action
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how little research of that kind existed before.
A research professor in the UMass Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences who has been study- ing gambling for almost four decades, Volberg has, for the past decade, been the principal investigator with Social and Economic Impacts of Gambling in Massachusetts (SEIGMA), whose latest report — the first of its kind in the nation — deals with the potential impact of legal sports gambling in the Bay State.
Volberg’s team mined data from their own surveys and studies that are part of the research ordered by the Massa- chusetts Legislature when lawmakers passed the Expanded Gaming Act in 2011. Meanwhile, a representative survey
of 8,000 adults was completed in Massachusetts earlier
this year and provides a snapshot of changes in gambling behavior, attitude, and problem-gambling prevalence since 2013-14.
“The National Council on Problem Gambling has seen a significant increase in sports-betting participation since 2018,” she told HCN, noting that it has also reported an increase in people saying they had experiences with one or more impacts or harms.
“That suggests that an increase in sports betting has the potential to come with increased harm, which is not a sur- prise, but in Massachusetts, because the Gaming Commis- sion already has familiarity with implementing measures to try to minimize and mitigate harm — because they already have that experience with casinos — we’re hopeful those harms can in fact be minimized,” Volberg added.
ports Betting Brings Uncertain Benefits, but Well-known Addiction Risks
By JOSEPH BEDNAR
hen Rachel Volberg and her team of researchers started examining the potential impacts of legal sports betting in Mas- sachusetts, she was surprised at
Alisha Khouri-Boucher, a clinical supervisor at MiraVis- ta Behavioral Health Center, agreed to an extent. “Gam- bling has been a concern for a long time, but we already have a casino close by, so we don’t see a major change with the people we serve from legalizing sports gambling; if they wanted to those things, they were already doing those things. It’s the behavior more than the access.”
Still, she added, “in my opinion, where we may see more of a problem is with young people, college-age people, who may still be home with mom and dad and have more dis- p“osable income. We might see an increase there, but that’s
If you’re a sports fan, you’re seeing advertising that looks like the old beer commercials — everyone’s happy, it’s exciting, it’s flashy. They’re targeting young people, and that’s potentially a problem.”
to be determined.
“Any time a new entertainment is starting up, it’s always
going to be advertised toward young people,” Khouri- Boucher continued, citing vaping as one example. “They weren’t looking for middle-aged people who’d been smok- ing for 25 years; they were looking at mid- to late adoles- cents. It’s kind of the same thing with sports gambling. If you’re a sports fan, you’re seeing advertising that looks like the old beer commercials — everyone’s happy, it’s excit-
ing, it’s flashy. They’re targeting young people, and that’s potentially a problem.”
The Massachusetts Gaming Commission selected Vol- berg’s team a decade ago to research the potential impacts of casinos — both economic and social.
“We’ve kept a pretty careful eye on things, but only a few U.S. states have any funding in their legislation to conduct research, so we know surprisingly little about the social and economic impacts of betting in the United States as a whole,” Volberg told HCN, and that’s even more true when it comes to legalized sports betting, which Massachusetts
ALISHAKHOURI-BOUCHER
recently became the 36th state to legalize.
Reflecting Khouri-Bouch- er’s concerns, SEIGMA’s study notes that sports bet- ting occurs in all demograph- ic groups but appeals most to young, well-educated men. It adds that problem gambling is higher among sports bettors primarily because they tend to be involved
with a large number of other
gambling activities, so legal- izing sports betting in Massachusetts has the potential to increase rates of gambling harm and problem gambling.
To mitigate those concerns, SEIGMA is advising the Gaming Commission to require operators to provide player data to the MGC on a regular basis and to cooperate with researchers; to prohibit live, in-game sports betting, which is disproportionately utilized by problem gamblers; and to restrict advertising and celebrity endorsements, which tend to promote sports betting in young people,
4 WWW.HEALTHCARENEWS.COM SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2022