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There are many reasons why people pursue a career in gambling studies – for some it’s a deliberate choice, while for others it evolves out of something quite different. When Alex Russell, Associate Professor and Principal Research Fellow at Central Queensland University in Australia, began his PhD on wine expertise and odour he had no idea that it would ultimately lead him to a career researching gambling harms. As a part-time PhD student, Alex taught classes in statistics and, as he says, ‘when people discover you know stats you tend to get invited on to lots of different projects’. It was his skill with stats that first led to his involvement with gambling studies academics and researchers like Nerilee Hing, Matthew Rockloff and Matthew Browne at CQUniversity’s Experimental Gambling Research Lab. From the outset, Alex is keen to emphasise that he is fortunate to work as part of some great teams on these projects and wants to make sure that credit is given to all involved, especially those who lead the studies. 

The Australian gambling context throws up a unique set of challenges for Alex and his colleagues at the Lab. A variety of stats show Australians to have the highest per capita gambling losses anywhere in the world. Part of this can be explained by the popularity and ubiquity of pokies (slot machines) across most of Australia. According to Alex, pokies can be found in virtually every pub and bar across the country (apart from Western Australia, which only permits them in specific gambling venues). In most other countries in the world, slot machines are only found in casinos, betting shops or other gambling-specific venues. ‘The ubiquity of pokies gives Australians easy, direct access to one of the most harmful forms of gambling’, says Alex. Despite this very permissive attitude towards pokies, however, the country’s regulatory environment is quite restrictive in other regards. Australia does not have the online slot machines or online casinos that can be found in many other countries and online in-play sports betting is also outlawed. This mixture of permissiveness on the one hand and restriction on the other provides a very specific context in which to study and understand gambling harms. 

Given the high levels of harm to be found in Australia, Alex emphasises that the country could learn a lot from safer gambling interventions that have been trialled or adopted overseas. A major concern with pokies is that people may spend hours at a time at the machine without a break and can rack up big losses in a single session. While venue staff should monitor player usage and intervene, this puts an unrealistic expectation on busy, minimum-wage staff who come on and off shift at different times. Alex says Norway has done some good work on evidence-based in-play breaks for online gambling and thinks Australia could benefit by learning from it. Indeed, New South Wales has recently trialled voluntary gaming cards which would limit the amounts that players could lose. The voluntary trial had low uptake, and industry has pushed back strongly against mandatory gaming cards, so there are barriers, but the public health benefits of such a system are clear. 

Part of the problem is that for some parts of Australian society, gambling and pokie use have become almost a rite of passage. ‘When you turn 18, you have a drink in the pub and a go on the pokies’, says Alex. Despite the evidence of harms, however, and the findings that underage and adolescent gambling are associated with higher rates of later problem gambling, research led by Nerilee Hing and involving Alex finds that underage gambling is not uncommon and often facilitated by parents. While staff in venues can check ID on each visit, once young people have access to an online gambling account, there are usually no further checks. A part of the problem is that, for many parents, gambling is one of many things to be concerned about, including alcohol, drugs and sex, and is often low on the list of concerns.  

That, then, brings us on to the topic of safer gambling messages and strategies to reduce gambling harms. Australia has moved away from its old safer gambling message, ‘Gamble responsibly’, to a set of new messages. Alex and colleagues, particularly Philip Newall, have trialled the new messages with participants in the UK and USA and found promising results. Messages like ‘Chances are you’re about to lose’ and ‘What are you prepared to lose today? Set a deposit limit’ rated much higher than either ‘Gamble responsibly’ or ‘Take time to think’. Alex, however, argues that ‘safer gambling messaging is actually a pretty weak intervention’ and believes that things such as account-based play (e.g., player cards, online accounts) and reasonable mandatory limits are where efforts should be focused. ‘We need personalised, targeted safer gambling interventions that actually resonate with the people who are most at risk’, says Alex.  

Finally, we turn to the issue of what Alex is currently working on. He has just finished a couple of prevalence studies and has been working with Matthew Browne on health utility measures to capture the impact of problem gambling. Alex’s hope is that measures can be standardised across countries to allow for true cross-jurisdiction comparisons of gambling prevalence and harms. In addition, he’s working on ways of capturing all aspects of harm, including harm to self, harm to affected others, legacy harm and harm to young people. He’s keen to chart the true impact of gambling harms on the population, as opposed to just those who gamble. In Australia, Alex says, there is a standard industry narrative that only 1% of people who gamble suffer harms, and therefore harm is not a big problem. But he believes that this neat figure fails to capture the messy reality of gambling harm which has a much larger societal impact, as seen in the team’s recent prevalence studies. Ultimately, Alex hopes that his work on prevalence and health utility can challenge the industry narrative and provide for a more nuanced and more informed discussion of gambling harms. 

The Academic Forum for the Study of Gambling (AFSG) welcomes the new NICE guidance on the identification, assessment and management of gambling-related harm (published 28th January 2025)

The guidelines include a clear set of recommendations for research. The AFSG has consistently advocated for evidence-led approaches and has funded research into critical areas of gambling harm identified as priority areas by both the 2023 government White Paper, and now by the NICE committee. The AFSG has already funded research into five of the fourteen areas considered as high priority by NICE, including: projects examining tools to assess gambling harm; models of care; improving access to care for specific population groups; pharmacological interventions; and interventions for affected others.

The AFSG remains committed to supporting research and fostering dialogue that ensures gambling policies that are grounded in robust evidence. The new statutory levy will see significant investment and we welcome new resources being allocated to research on gambling harms. We look forward to continued collaboration with NICE, the research councils, the Gambling Commission, and all relevant stakeholders to achieve these shared goals.

AFSG members come from many different disciplines – psychology, public health, psychiatry, economics, and urban geography to name but a few. As a barrister and having recently submitted a PhD on the regulation of gambling-like products in video games, Leon Xiao is no exception. But while he does have a legal education and background, however, Leon sees himself as more of an interdisciplinary researcher whose methods are well suited to the field of gambling studies. In this month’s member spotlight interview, we discuss Leon’s journey into video game regulation, the pros and cons of ‘light touch’ enforcement, influencing policymakers and more. 

Leon’s first real opportunity to work on technology law came as an undergraduate during a year abroad programme in Singapore. At the time, says Leon, UK law schools didn’t tend to offer modules on tech law, but Singapore did. ‘It was 2018 and the debate around loot boxes [random in-game purchases] was making the news, so studying them and other gambling-like products in video games seemed apt’, says Leon. This initial interest in video games and their regulation would subsequently form the basis for his recently submitted PhD thesis.  

Unfortunately, Leon’s research paints a dispiriting picture of loot box regulation and enforcement both in the UK and around the world. He admits that there is no one model of regulation that seems to work especially well when it comes to gambling-like products in video games. While there are some aspects of regulation, such as probability disclosures for loot boxes, that have broad acceptance, Leon argues that other attempts at regulation work much less well. Beyond the biggest games and largest markets, compliance drops markedly. ‘Broadly, the pattern is non-compliance and non-enforcement’, says Leon.  

Compliance and enforcement don’t necessarily have to originate from an uncompromising, tough legal framework. Leon has plenty of experience of submitting complaints to the UK’s self-regulator Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) regarding non-compliance of video games companies. His initial efforts bore fruit, as the ASA would investigate and publish their findings. Sometimes, the bad PR would be sufficient to get companies to improve their compliance. More recently, however, the ASA has been less inclined to publish details of repeated infractions by games companies. The result is that there is no public record showing non-compliance by companies, meaning there is little chance of the issue being pursued by official regulators such as Trading Standards or the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).  

Even where informal approaches do bear fruit, the improved compliance may not be sustained over time. When news emerged last year of a celebrity endorsing a popular game that did not comply with advertising regulations around loot boxes, the company took action to include prominent disclosure information in their ads. A couple of months later, however, that disclosure information had slipped to the end of their ads and may have once again been in breach of UK and EU regulations. 

All the indications point to a system of compliance, regulation and enforcement that is generally ineffective in multiple countries. Despite this, there is a glimmer of hope when it comes to countries learning from one another. According to Leon, there are positive instances where lessons from one country can be picked up and learned by policymakers and legislators in another. He has personally written to several countries regarding loot box regulation and has received some positive replies. Unfortunately, misunderstandings are common too. A report from New Zealand, for instance, erroneously claimed that the UK had banned loot boxes for under 18s. These misunderstandings of policy and regulation risk creating a system whereby actions are based on incorrect or poorly understood evidence. 

As our call draws to a close, the conversation turns to Leon’s experiences as a PhD student. In particular, he is keen to encourage other postgrads and PhD students to apply for funding opportunities, including AFSG’s postgraduate research and conference/travel funding. He says that it can be difficult for postgraduate students to show a track record of successfully applying for funding because of the relative paucity of opportunities available. Funding like AFSG’s, however, not only enables students to build that track record, but also provides them with access to a whole network of academics and researchers in their field. 

I finish up by asking Leon what’s next. Having recently submitted his PhD thesis, he is hoping to move into a career in academia. His research points to a regulatory framework everywhere that is ill equipped to deal with the challenges of loot boxes and gambling-like products in video games. There is a need for any action to be based on rigorous, up-to-date evidence and Leon hopes to be part of the conversation. 

Throughout the year, AFSG runs several grant programmes. At the moment, our major and minor exploratory grant programmes are open for applications and you can find more about the awards, criteria and eligibility here.

We also currently have two more award programmes available – our student travel and conference grants and open access funding grants. Six student travel and conference grants are available each year, with up to £500 of funding being awarded. In recent years, these grants have helped fund travel to relevant academic conferences in the UK, USA and Belgium.

Our open access grant funding, meanwhile, supports researchers and academics at UK universities to publish their research on gambling harms so that it is free and open to all. While many universities have open access partnerships and arrangements in place, others do not. We hope that our open access funding will enable greater publication of free and open research on gambling harms.

For details of how to apply for each of our funding streams, check out our funding page.

Joanne Lloyd is Reader in Cyberpsychology at the University of Wolverhampton. She has researched online gambling, loot boxes and problematic video game usage among other areas. In our conversation, she explains the motivations underpinning online gambling, the potential of online peer support networks and talks about her recent work on the pervasive issue of stigma around gambling harms. 

When Joanne first began researching online gambling in 2007, she recognised the potential for transformative research using customer data. While there have been some promising developments, Joanne believes that this remains an underdeveloped area. ‘Gambling companies collect vast amounts of data, but researchers often don’t have access to it’, she says. This data could provide critical insights into gambling behaviours and inform harm-reduction strategies. For example, identifying patterns of at-risk behaviour could lead to targeted interventions. Yet, without sufficient access to this information, much of its potential remains untapped. 

Despite new technologies and companies, online gambling products exploit the same motivations and emotions as traditional gambling—whether it is a yearning for escapism or the dream of a big win. According to Joanne, online companies are also increasingly replicating those motivations most closely associated with in-person gambling. ‘Webcams and live chat functions aim to replicate the social element of a traditional bingo hall’, she notes, ‘while loot box opening parties and social media communities add a social element to what might be traditionally considered a solitary pursuit’.  

Much of Joanne’s time in recent months has been devoted to the topic of stigma and gambling, working in collaboration with colleagues from her university and NatCen among others. The findings point to a widespread and pervasive stigma around gambling addiction and problem gambling, despite gambling itself being quite readily socially accepted. This stigmatisation of harms is amplified by narratives that emphasise personal responsibility. Phrases such as ‘gamble responsibly’ or statements such as ‘the fun that can be had from a flutter on the horses’ both trivialise gambling harms and stigmatise those who suffer from harms as being ‘the odd ones out’. According to Joanne’s research, this kind of discourse simultaneously shifts responsibility for gambling harms to the individual, while allowing gambling companies to abrogate their responsibility for the harms they cause. This focus on individual responsibility is particularly hard felt among people with low incomes, for whom social stigma of gambling harms is especially pronounced.  

The prevalence and ubiquity of such stigma matters because it has consistently been found to be a barrier to help seeking among people suffering gambling harms. People who suffer from a moderate level of harm are often dissuaded from seeking treatment because they do not want to be stigmatised in this way. Those who are in recovery but relapse are subject to very high levels of stigma for their perceived lack of willpower. Women with children may be reluctant to admitting to a gambling problem because of how society views them as caregivers and mothers. Many people in these situations could well benefit from some form of intervention, but in many cases the pervasive stigma surrounding gambling harms prevents them from seeking that help.  

While there is no doubting the harms caused by online gambling, Joanne is interested in how the internet may be used to provide support to those suffering from or at risk of gambling harms. She is in the early stages of a project to examine the role that online peer support can play in supporting those suffering from gambling harms. ‘Anecdotally, we’ve heard some good things, but in truth there isn’t a lot of research on online peer support for gambling harms out there’, says Joanne. She is interested in how different people use such networks – from lurkers to regular posters – and how and when online peer support can best be used. ‘We need to understand what’s needed in terms of moderation and we need to understand that there are circumstances where it may not be ideal’, says Joanne. Still, the promise of online peer support and the potential opportunities it offers are exciting. 

Finally, we come to the topic of the government’s recent announcement on the statutory levy and online slot stake limits. I ask Joanne what she thinks the priorities should be in terms of online gambling. ‘There are so many priorities, but I would like to see action on loot boxes given their similarity to online gambling’, says Joanne. The gamblification of gaming is a concern and she doesn’t want online gaming become online gambling by another name. She’s also keen to see more action on educating young people on gambling harms that don’t rely on individual responsibility and ‘gamble responsibly’ narratives. ‘We need to move away from education approaches that make young people feel guilty for experiencing gambling harms and instead focus on how gambling products and companies cause those harms in the first place.’ 

Today, Monday 2nd December, we have opened applications for our minor and major exploratory grant funding programmes. Here is all the information you need to submit an application to us. Full information and guidance on the programmes, how to apply and what to expect is in the application pack.

What’s the purpose of these programmes?

Our minor exploratory funding programme offers two awards of up to £30,000 each with a one-year duration. These grants are intended to fund smaller exploratory research. Preference for these grants will be given to early career researchers.

Our major exploratory funding programme offers one award of up to £90,000 with a one-year duration. It is intended to be used for a major project and is open to all researchers.

The aim behind these programmes is to develop capacity for research by providing funds to conduct preliminary/exploratory research that will encourage innovation and increase the capacity of researchers to compete successfully for other, larger, research awards and other funding sources. Such projects can include, but are not limited to:

• Secondary analysis of existing data
• Pilot and feasibility studies
• Development or testing of instruments
• Development of research methodology
• Small, self-contained research projects

Who can apply?

• All applicants must be members of the AFSG. AFSG membership is free of-charge and open to anyone affiliated or working with a UK university who is interested in conducting or co-creating independent research on gambling-related harm.
• Research funding must be administered by a UK university.
• All applicants must complete a conflict of interest (COI) declaration. Projects including team members with significant COIs are ineligible for funding.

What is the timeline?

How do I apply?

Applicants must first submit an expression of interest (EOI) to register their interest in the programme. Applicants who do not first submit an EOI will not be eligible for consideration. The EOI will list basic information about you, your proposed project and team. Applicants who submit an EOI by the deadline can then submit a full proposal with details of the proposed research, a budget, CV, COI forms etc. Detailed information on how to prepare the proposal can be found in the application pack.

How are funding decisions made?

A peer review committee selected for their specific expertise will assess each proposal and independently score them. The full assessment rubric can be found in the application pack. These scores will then be aggregated by the team at Greo. Once this has been completed, an adjudication panel appointed by the AFSG Co-chairs will consider all applications, scores and reviewer comments to come to a consensus on which projects will receive funding.

And if I’m successful?

Successful applicants will be notified by Greo, who will administer and manage the grants on behalf of the AFSG. Report templates and details of deliverables are available in the full grant application pack.

What if my project is not selected this time around?

Unsuccessful applicants will be encouraged to resubmit to the next funding call using feedback from the peer reviewers to strengthen the proposal.

Whom do I contact with any questions?

Please direct any questions about the application or funding process to afsg-funding@greo.ca

The Academic Forum for the Study of Gambling (AFSG) welcomes the government’s plans to introduce a statutory levy to fund gambling harm research, prevention, and treatment.  

We are especially encouraged by the commitment to establishing a sustainable and meaningful level of funding for independent research on gambling harm. In our letters to ministers, we have stressed that this has long been a critical need, and we are optimistic about the impact this investment will have on driving evidence-based policy and practice in the coming years. 

The AFSG has consistently advocated for evidence-led approaches and has funded research into critical areas of gambling harm identified as priority areas by the 2023 White Paper. These have included projects examining social and economic factors related to gambling harm, the impact of gambling advertising, links between gaming and gambling, and the relationship between gambling venues and harm. 

In addition to the levy, we are pleased to see plans to implement significantly lower stake limits for online slots, a move that is strongly supported by the existing evidence base. 

However, while these measures represent meaningful progress, we note that several important proposals from the 2023 White Paper have yet to be addressed in this latest announcement. We look forward to further clarity and updates on: 

• Measures to address gambling by individuals under 18; 

• Initiatives to make online games safer by design; 

• Steps to limit the advertising and promotion of gambling; 

• Developments regarding affordability checks; and 

• The outcomes of consultations on allowing cashless payments on gaming machines. 

The AFSG remains committed to supporting research and fostering dialogue that ensures gambling policies that are grounded in robust evidence. We look forward to continued collaboration with all stakeholders to achieve these shared goals. 

We are pleased to announce we will be hosting a funding and research webinar on Monday 2nd December from 14:00 until 15:30 GMT. Our major and minor exploratory grant programmes will open in early December for expressions of interest. The webinar will provide details of the programmes and application process, while participants will also hear from two previous AFSG funding recipients about their work.  

The webinar will consist of 60 minutes for the introduction of the funding programmes, speaker presentations and Q and A. This will be followed by an optional additional 20-30 minutes for extra questions or discussion.

During the webinar, you will hear from members of the AFSG Executive Committee who will introduce the funding programmes and provide important dates for applicants.

In addition, we will be joined by two previous AFSG-funded recipients to hear details of their work:

Professor John Cunningham – PhD – is an academic researcher studying pathways to recovery from addictions. His research has a primary focus on brief interventions for addictive behaviours. He holds the Nat & Loretta Rothschild Chair in Addictions Treatment & Recovery Studies. John will be discussing his recent AFSG-funded project, Pilot of a Randomised Trial of a Brief Online Personalised Feedback Intervention for the UK Context Designed to Prevent, Reduce, and Address Gambling Harm.

Dr Bryan Singer is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex (Brighton, UK) where he directs the Singer Neuro Lab. He is the Director of the Sussex Addiction Research and Intervention Centre (SARIC) and a member of Sussex Neuroscience. He also has an Associate role at The Open University (UK). Bryan will be discussing his recent AFSG-funded work on Modelling Individual Variation in Response to Pharmacological Intervention for Problematic Gambling.

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