Live-odds gambling advertising and consumer protection

In-play gambling is a recent innovation allowing gambling to occur during the course of a sporting event, rather than merely before play commences. For years, in-play gambling has been marketed in the UK via adverts displaying current betting odds during breaks in televised soccer, e.g., “England to score in the first 20 minutes, 4-to-1.” Previous research shows that this so-called “live-odds” advertising is skewed toward complex events with high profit margins which consumers do not evaluate rationally. Recent UK regulatory guidance on “impulsiveness and urgency,” aiming to enhance consumer protection around gambling advertising, states that gambling advertising should not “unduly pressure the audience to gamble.” We explored the frequency and content of live-odds advertising over the 2018 soccer World Cup, as a case study of the first major televised sporting event after the publication of this UK regulatory guidance. In total, 69 live-odds adverts were shown over 32 matches (M = 2.16 per-match), by five bookmakers. We identified two key features that made advertised bets appear more urgent than necessary. First, 39.1% of bets could be determined before the match ended. Second, 24.6% of bets showed a recent improvement in odds, including a 15.9% subset of “flash odds,” which were limited in both time and quantity. Advertised odds were again skewed toward complex events, with a qualitative trend toward greater complexity than at the previous World Cup. We believe that consumers should be protected against the targeted content of gambling advertising

“Impulsiveness and urgency:” Gambling advertising and the 2018 soccer World Cup

Recent guidance from the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority states that gambling adverts should not “unduly pressure the audience to gamble.” Live-odds adverts display current betting odds during breaks in televised soccer, e.g., “Kylian Mbappe to score next, 9-to-1.” In this preprint, it is argued that the 63 “live-odds” TV adverts shown over 32 matches by 5 bookmakers during the 2018 soccer World Cup do not comply with the regulator’s intentions. Live-odds were advertised as being inherently unstable. In total, 15 adverts showed a recent improvement in odds. Of these, 10 adverts were for “flash odds . . ., which means that if you’re not quick enough, they could be gone in a flash.” And 36 adverts were shown during the half-time break. There were common themes across bookmakers’ live-odds advertising, supporting previous studies on how live-odds adverts align with probabilistic cognitive illusions. We believe that sufficient evidence exists to justify banning live-odds adverts

“Impulsiveness and urgency:” Gambling advertising and the 2018 soccer World Cup

In-play gambling is a recent innovation allowing gambling to occur during the course of a sporting event, rather than merely before play commences. For years, in-play gambling has been marketed in the UK via adverts displaying current betting odds during breaks in televised soccer, e.g., “England to score in the first 20 minutes, 4-to-1.” Previous research shows that this so-called “live-odds” advertising is skewed toward complex events with high profit margins which consumers do not evaluate rationally. Recent UK regulatory guidance on “impulsiveness and urgency,” aiming to enhance consumer protection around gambling advertising, states that gambling advertising should not “unduly pressure the audience to gamble.” We explored the frequency and content of live-odds advertising over the 2018 soccer World Cup, as a case study of the first major televised sporting event after the publication of this UK regulatory guidance. In total, 69 live-odds adverts were shown over 32 matches (M = 2.16 per-match), by five bookmakers. We identified two key features that made advertised bets appear more urgent than necessary. First, 39.1% of bets could be determined before the match ended. Second, 24.6% of bets showed a recent improvement in odds, including a 15.9% subset of “flash odds,” which were limited in both time and quantity. Advertised odds were again skewed toward complex events, with a qualitative trend toward greater complexity than at the previous World Cup. We believe that consumers should be protected against the targeted content of gambling advertising

Live-odds gambling advertising and consumer protection

In-play gambling is a recent innovation allowing gambling to occur during the course of a sporting event, rather than merely before play commences. For years, in-play gambling has been marketed in the UK via adverts displaying current betting odds during breaks in televised soccer, e.g., "England to score in the first 20 minutes, 4-to-1." Previous research shows that this so-called "live-odds" advertising is skewed toward complex events with high profit margins which consumers do not evaluate rationally. Recent UK regulatory guidance on "impulsiveness and urgency," aiming to enhance consumer protection around gambling advertising, states that gambling advertising should not "unduly pressure the audience to gamble." We explored the frequency and content of live-odds advertising over the 2018 soccer World Cup, as a case study of the first major televised sporting event after the publication of this UK regulatory guidance. In total, 69 live-odds adverts were shown over 32 matches (M = 2.16 per-match), by five bookmakers. We identified two key features that made advertised bets appear more urgent than necessary. First, 39.1% of bets could be determined before the match ended. Second, 24.6% of bets showed a recent improvement in odds, including a 15.9% subset of "flash odds," which were limited in both time and quantity. Advertised odds were again skewed toward complex events, with a qualitative trend toward greater complexity than at the previous World Cup. We believe that consumers should be protected against the targeted content of gambling advertising

Decision-makers use social information to update their preferences—but choose for others as they do for themselves

People’s risky decisions can be highly influenced by the social context in which they take place. Across three experiments we investigated the influence of three social factors upon participants’ decisions: the recipient of the decision-making outcome (self, other, or joint), the nature of the relationship with the other agent (friend, stranger, or teammate), and the type of information that participants received about others’ preferences: none at all, information about how previous participants had decided, or information about a partner’s preference. We found that participants’ decisions about risk did not differ according to whether the outcome at stake was their own, another agent’s, or a joint outcome, nor according to the type of information available. Participants were, however, willing to adjust their preferences for risky options in light of social information