Abstract

Problem gambling is a major public health concern in Australia and internationally (Blank et al., 2021), referring to a pattern of harmful gambling behaviours. Population prevalence estimates for past year problem gambling ranging from 0.1% to 5.8% globally (Calado & Griffiths, 2016) and from 0.7% to 1.0% in Australia (Delfabbro & King, 2021).

The impacts of COVID-19 on gambling participation and on the levels of problem gambling risk received attention early on in the pandemic, showing an overall reduction in gambling frequency and expenditure in 2020 (Hodgins & Stevens, 2021). In Australia, social restrictions were in place for extended periods during the pandemic, particularly in the two most populous states, Victoria and New South Wales (Chodor & Hameiri, 2023). Due to decreased access, gambling participation and problems declined significantly around the height of COVID-19 restrictions in Australia, increasing again when restrictions began to ease (Biddle, 2022). Our own published research shows that while overall gambling participation rates decreased during COVID-19 (Hodgins & Stevens, 2021; Quinn et al., 2022), by early 2023 participation had nearly returned to pre-pandemic levels (Suomi et al., 2024).

Notwithstanding the drop in gambling participation during and after COVID-19, there has also been a longer-term general trend of a steady decrease in gambling participation in Australia.1 Since our last report in 2023, no other published data show the direction of this trend by early 2024. In this paper, we examine whether gambling participation has continued to increase, since COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, or continue to gradually fall in line with a trend that began prior to the pandemic.

While gambling participation decreased on population level during COVID-19, our longitudinal data from 2019-2023 also shows that those who were at increased risk of gambling problems pre-COVID-19 were less likely to reduce gambling participation or level of risk during the pandemic (Suomi et al., 2024). Our data also suggest that these individuals may have ‘switched’ their gambling activity from venue-based gambling (e.g. EGM gambling) to activities that are readily available online in Australia, such as betting on sports and racing. This may reflect increase in overall online gambling participation that has been observed prior to COVID-19. The current paper presents the first nationally representative data of the rates of online gambling participation overall, and across multiple activities in Australia beyond COVID-19, provides important evidence of the long term-shift in gambling behaviours.

With that in mind, the aim of the current study is to establish
1. Prevalence of Australian gambling participation and problem gambling risk in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023 and 2024.
2. Overall participation rate across gambling activities in Australian population in 2024
3. Online gambling rate across gambling activities in 2024
4. The sociodemographic and wellbeing profiles of individuals gambling online in 2024

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