A leading anti-gambling campaigner claims that online gambling companies have been pushed by greed when targeting bored young Australian male citizens during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Tim Costello, a representative of the Alliance for Gambling Reform, has once again called for the Federal Government to suspend online gambling advertising at a time when local residents have been spending more than they normally do on online gambling sites. According to reports, the coronavirus shutdown that forced retail gambling companies to cease their operations during the Covid-19 crisis has ended up with a significant increase in the popularity of online gambling across the country.
Now, Mr Costello has shared that gambling companies have been targeting primarily young men who were particularly bored while in lockdown due to coronavirus pandemic. He further reminded that in other countries, such as the UK, some of the largest sports betting operations had willingly pledged to stop their advertising during the nationwide shutdown.
As Casino Guardian has already reported, online gambling in Australia experienced massive growth during the ongoing coronavirus lockdown. According to new data provided by analytics company Illion and economic advisors AlphaBeta, online gambling operations were subject to almost 150% growth in the period from April 26th and May 3rd in comparison to any other normal week before the pandemic outbreak. Also, in the aforementioned week, general customer spending was up by 13%, and still, it was 7% lower in comparison to weeks before the coronavirus lockdown.
Online Gambling Spending Has Risen During the Coronavirus Pandemic
Andrew Charlton, director of AlphaBeta, explained that the increase registered in online gambling services could be due to the eased restrictions and the one-off coronavirus support payment of AU$750 that was received by some local citizens.
Dr Charlton shared that the Federal Government was able to check in real-time what was the impact of this support payment, mainly in terms of spending than the stimulus.
Since April 2020, there has been some up-and-down movement in online gambling spending, but still, the latter managed to stay above 30% of normal spending on a weekly basis. Apart from that, the latest data from April showed that men were ready to spend more money on so-called non-essentials than women. They were also spending seven times more on gambling.
Still, despite the above-mentioned data, Mr Costello said there has been one positive thing about the coronavirus pandemic which resulted in a massive shutdown of many economic sectors. With retail businesses kept shut, poker machine venues were also non-operational during the lockdown, which has ended up with some regular pokie players changing their gambling habits in the positive direction.
According to the Alliance for Gambling Reform, Australian residents have saved up to AU$1.5 billion since the shutdown of retail gambling services of casinos and poker machine clubs and pubs. The problem is that an increase in the number of people registering online gambling accounts during the lockdown was registered.
- Author
Daniel Williams
