Volberg Featured in Webinar on Online Gambling
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Gambling impacts expert Rachel Volberg, research professor of epidemiology, shared her expertise as a panelist on a webinar hosted by the Center for Data Analytics and Sports Gaming Research at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Md.
The Feb. 28 webinar, “High-stakes Revolution: The Hidden Costs of Round-the-clock Online Gambling,” explored the economic, social and psychological impacts of the unprecedented betting that’s taking place online, primarily due to the rise of legal sports betting.
Volberg, principal investigator of the UMass-based Social and Economic Impacts of Gambling in Massachusetts (SEIGMA) who has researched gambling impacts for four decades, offered that gambling research remains in its infancy, especially when it comes to online gambling. She and co-panelists Jamie McKelvey, deputy attorney general of the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement, and Keith Whyte, former executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, agreed that the best approach to responsible online gambling needs to focus on public health, proactive regulations and education beginning in childhood.
“There is no extensive support for research and evaluation, so what we know about gambling in the United States is pretty limited,” Volberg told the crowd of students, faculty, regulators and legislators. “From very early on I have argued, as have other gambling scholars, that gambling problems need to be conceptualized and addressed not at the individual level but more at the population level. So, understanding the characteristics of the populations at risk and implementing measures that will prevent those people from progressing toward more serious problems is badly needed.”
McKelvey discussed steps New Jersey has taken to use technology, such as data anonymization, to understand trends and create guardrails for people at risk for a gambling problem.
Volberg noted that there may be a slowdown in sports betting legalization as more lawmakers, regulators, researchers and the general public become concerned about the unknown impacts of this most ubiquitous form of gambling. To date, 39 states and the District of Columbia have legalized at least one form of sports betting.
While the traditional at-risk group for problem sports betting is young men, Volberg said that other populations also need to be considered at-risk. They include women, who are being targeted by sports betting marketers; immigrants, who may be unfamiliar with such easily accessible gambling; and people in recovery from problem gambling, who are “highly vulnerable to relapse. “All of these subgroups need different types of messaging,” Volberg explained.
In the end, Volberg said we all need to keep in mind that the negative impacts of problem gambling are not confined to the person with the disorder. “Having a gambling problem has an impact not just on the individual,” she said, “but on their family, their community and society writ large.”