An interdisciplinary investigation of sports betting
Gambling generates significant health and social harms in Australia. Yet there is little research on the use of mobile smartphone betting apps, even though sports betting is the fastest growing segment of the gambling market. This presentation will share findings from an Australian Research Council Discovery project that aims to better understand how young adults use, communicate about and experience mobile phone sports betting applications.
This interdisciplinary study uses social practice theory and combines ethnography and cognitive neuroscience to examine how use of sports betting apps is becoming established as everyday social practice – normalising problem gambling. Ross will share insights on how changes in technology in the form of smartphones and sports betting apps, gambling marketing, and the spaces and places of betting have changed norms, practices, and the gambling environment. Professor Ross Gordon will also consider implications for gambling risk and harm, including how sports betting facilitates what is described as the dark side of flow. Finally, the presentation will reflect on how study findings can inform gambling policy and programmes leading to better health and social outcomes.
Dates and times
Wednesday 27 April 2022, 12.30 –1.30pm
A weblink to join the session will be shared after registration.
YOUR FACILITATOR
Ross Gordon is a Professor at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane in the School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations, QUT Business School. He focuses on social marketing, consumer cultures, and critical marketing teaching and research. Ross is a member of the WHO Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health. He works across various behaviour and social change issues including gambling, COVID-19, energy, climate action and environmental sustainability, alcohol, gambling, tobacco control, mental health, workplace bullying, and critiques of neoliberalism. Ross has been a principal or named investigator on projects attracting over $7.9m in research funds. He has published more than 90 academic journals, book chapters and conference papers and a leading book: Strategic Social Marketing: For Behaviour and Social Change.
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