Philip Newall’s journey into the world of gambling studies didn’t follow the traditional academic route. Beginning in his teenage years he spent a decade playing online poker, an experience that sparked his interest in the psychology of gambling and its potential harms. That academic curiosity has since developed into a career, with Philip now a lecturer and academic at the University of Bristol.
His early experiences have given Philip a particular interest in how children and adolescents may first experience gambling. He says that a lot of research in this area focuses on how children and teenagers may be exposed to age-restricted products and technologies and the relatively higher risk of harm that these products carry. But the age restrictions and barriers to use of these sorts of products typically make them much less accessible to under 18s. He argues that other, lower-risk products such as coin pushers and claw machines remain underexplored in the literature. From a public health perspective, this type of gambling – which is much more widely available to and used by children – presents an interesting problem. Although it is a lower-risk gambling product on a per user basis, its widespread usage means it can pose a serious public health challenge. While he doesn’t expect any imminent action from the UK’s regulators on this issue, Philip does argue that higher-risk gambling-like products which are widely available to under 18s, such as loot boxes in games, need immediate action.
On the wider question of regulation, Philip is pessimistic. He believes that gambling policymakers tend towards slow, incremental change in the hope that small changes might have some measurable impact on population-levels of gambling harm. They don’t. ‘It’s akin to bringing a peashooter to a gunfight’, he argues. He says policymakers are effectively outgunned by the better-resourced gambling industry whose model is built on their customers losing money. What’s needed is new thinking and bold approaches, but Philip says that these are in short supply – not just in gambling policy, but in all sorts of other areas too, including climate breakdown and other systemic issues.
Part of the problem is that regulators are not especially good at learning from regulatory approaches tried and tested in other jurisdictions. In Australia, for instance, in-play betting, which carries a higher risk than traditional pre-game betting, is subject to regulations that the UK does not currently have. Mobile betting apps in Australia do not allow in-play betting, with customers instead having to call an operator to place a bet. By introducing a small amount of friction into the process, the Australian approach has been able to reduce harmful in-play gambling, in particular among the at-risk demographic of young adults. Although Philip and his colleagues have written about the Australian approach and tried to promote it, no action has yet been taken.
When I ask Philip about the wider impact of his research, he’s candid in admitting he hasn’t (yet) achieved the sort of real-world impact he wants to see. ‘I want to do something on population-levels of gambling harms, but overall, my work has had a miniscule impact on gambling harms’, he admits. In part, he feels that this is because it’s an unequal and an unfair fight. This is because, unlike the research community, the gambling industry is allowed to push through its own untested approaches without the research to back them up. He says that one small success he has been able to play his part in was getting safer gambling ads changed in the UK. Philip’s research found that the previous industry-branded safer gambling ads and the slogan ‘When The Fun Stops Stop’ actually increased the urge to gamble. The new slogan ‘Take Time To Think’ dissociates gambling from ‘fun’, but is itself also unable to have a measurable impact on harms. Humorously his research found that ads for the furniture store Oak Furnitureland and the paint manufacturer Ronseal were more effective than industry-branded safer gambling adverts at reducing people’s urges to gamble. The message is clear: there is an urgent need for independent and effective public health campaigns.
While it might sometimes feel like a losing battle, Philip argues that the best way that he and other academics can achieve their goals is through collaborating in new and unexpected ways. He says that he’s only able to work on new areas thanks to the help of his colleagues and co-authors and it’s clear he values open, constructive conversations about his own work. In a recent piece in the journal Addiction, Philip and his co-author David Zendle responded to a commentary on their work by Australian academic Robert Heirene on the UK’s affordability checks system. For Philip, the fact that Heirene had picked up on their work and was keen to test their insights was a welcome sign. While some may not take kindly to attempts to replicate or even challenge a study’s findings, for Philip this is a necessary and important part of the research journey. ‘As a researcher, you have to challenge established knowledge’, he argues.
Finally, we turn to the topic of what Philip is working on now and what he’s most excited about in the field. ‘Using datasets in new ways and combining them together to ask new questions is what I’m most interested in right now’, he says. As for his own work, he is currently looking at how other countries have developed quite different economic models of gambling to the UK’s to see what can be learned about how different jurisdictions tackle gambling harms. Whether and if the UK is willing to learn, however, is an entirely different matter.
Academic Forum for the Study of Gambling 