A declining number of Australians gambled in the 12 months to March 2018 compared to the year before, but this fall masks a continued growth in mobile betting, according to a new study.
Market research firm Roy Morgan surveyed a sample of 50,000 Australians about their gambling habits and found that “despite the growing proliferation of gambling options, such as online and mobile betting” the number of Australians taking part in the three months period to March 2018 had declined from 50.6% to 49.1% compared to 2017.
The study found that 3.1 million Australians engaged in some level of casino-style gaming, while 1.9 million placed bets on sports, and 7.8 million people played the lottery or scratch cards. However, it appears that there is little cross-over between the games, as only 568,000 Australians took part in all three forms of gambling.
Roy Morgan CEO, Michele Levine, explains:
“Gambling is now an activity which nearly half of all Australians participate in within a 3-month period, but this statistic alone does not do justice to the varying behaviours of those millions of gamblers. They vary from casual scratchie buyers to work friends betting on their footy team to wealthy businessmen at poker tables.”
Whilst the overall trend may be downwards, the number of people engaged in sports betting grew over the last year, a fact that Levine puts down to mobile phone betting replacing traditional bookies. According to the study, of the 3.4 million people who place at least one bet each year, over a third of them bet online, which is more than double those who played poker or other games at an Australian online casino, with punters increasingly preferring the convenience of betting on their favourite teams from their smartphone than making a trip to the high street.
