Abstract
Introduction: The COVID-19 outbreak will likely have a public health impact beyond immediate disease transmission. Little is known about whether social distancing and other societal changes has provoked an increase in gambling, whether decreased betting opportunities due to paused sports events spurred gamblers to transition to online casino gambling, or whether any of these factors have had an impact on problem gambling.Methods: Data on lookup queries against the Swedish Gambling Paus registry, logging all initiated gambling sessions by all licensed gambling providers, from 2019-01-01 (start of registry) to 2020-04-08 (well into the first phase of the outbreak) were analyzed using TBATS time series forecasting to estimate trends after the first domestic COVID-19 death. Obfuscated data on daily total wagered and deposited amounts, split by modality (casino or betting, and low and high intensity, respectively) for the equivalent period were supplied by a licensed online gambling provider.Results: Total gambling activity decreased by 13.29% during the first phase of the outbreak compared to forecast. Analyses of online gambling data revealed that although betting decreased substantially in synchrony with a slight increase in online casino gambling, there was no increase in likely problematic, high-intensity gambling and neither did total online gambling increase.Conclusions: This first, preliminary study revealed no increase in Swedish gambling activity, total or specifically online, in the first phase of the COVID-19 outbreak. Future research should examine whether pandemic-induced transitioning between gambling modalities and/or increased participation in gambling, leads to long-term effects on prevalence of problem gambling.
Highlights
The COVID-19 outbreak will likely have a public health impact beyond immediate disease transmission
Recent survey research suggests that around 0.6% of the Swedish population aged 16−87 are problem gamblers according to the PGSI definition and scoring interval [24], that an additional 3.6% present low-to moderate risk gambling, that online gamblers are overrepresented amongst problem gamblers, and that the prevalence of last-year online gambling increased slightly from 2015 to 2018, from 18 to 21% [25]
Comparing observed gambling activity 2020-03-12 to 2020-0408 to TBATS forecast calculated using data preceding this period, revealed a consistent and statistically significant overall decrease of 13.29% compared to forecast
Summary
The COVID-19 outbreak will likely have a public health impact beyond immediate disease transmission. Burgeoning research supports the efficacy of social distancing strategies in combatting this pandemic [4,5,6,7], such measures are likely to have a public mental health impact beyond the immediate effects on SARS-CoV-2 transmission [8]. In Sweden, public concerns were raised at an early stage of the outbreak that social distancing has increased gambling activity and possibly the prevalence of problem gambling [9], inciting the Swedish government to introduce temporary legislation (a decree, 2020:495) to the Swedish gambling market that includes a deposit limit on online casinos of 5,000 SEK per week (per gambling provider) and obligatory duration limits. Beyond investigating change in total gambling activity, studying such transition effects is another important research question since it is well-established that different gambling modalities are associated with different risks for developing gambling problems, both empirically [16, 17] and theoretically [18]
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