The Urban Institute Warns About Sports Bettors’ Financial Challenges 

A new report by the Urban Institute has focused on studying more closely the habits of sports gambling and the possible financial hardships that they face as a result of their gambling habit.

Online Gamblers Run a Higher Risk of Ending up in Financial Trouble

The survey has focused on analyzing data from 320 sports gamblers who placed wagers online or/and in-person, and established that players who gambled more also had a higher chance of having placed riskier wagers over the past 12 months. 

There was a distinction between online and in-person gamblers as well, with the former group citing more financial hardship and challenges during the time they were gambling in the 12 months surveyed. 

In fact, online sports bettors were 15 times more likely to report having missed a bill payment than those who preferred to gamble in-person, and were twice as likely to have saved less money than the latter group. 

However, 12% of gamblers self-reported that they saved less money than they would have had they not been gambling. The majority of such people came from the group of sports bettors with low incomes, below $50,000, and young gamblers – those aged 18-29. 

Online sports bettors also tend to gamble a lot more frequently – with 7% confirming that they were gambling daily, while 0% of in-person bettors said so. However, 28% of bettors said they bet weekly, and 23% said that they bet monthly. 

The report also reinforces another worrying piece of data: a growing number of people gamble to win money (67%) of all sports gamblers, even though the activity is specifically said not to be linked to skill but pure chance. The average loss of gamblers is 7.5 cents for every dollar they wager.

Around 55% of respondents said they bet less than $100 in the past 12 months, while 11% said that they have spent $1,000 or more.