We Take a Look at the Published Results of Some Research into Australian Gambling Habits

Added: April 17, 2014

We have just read the results of some research into the online gambling habits of Australian online gamblers that has been undertaken by Gambling Research Australia. This is quite interesting research, following up on the article we posted a while back, that covered similar research that polled not just online gamblers, but also those that visited real world gambling establishments, and it is fascinating to see how these two separate sources of research have aligned quite well. This new research polled almost 20,000 Australians, and takes in responses to over 400 questions.

Australia has a population of a little over 23 million, we presented this number in the previous post we published about the alternate source of gambling research. Now, this new online gambling only research, shows that 80% of Australians have been online gamblers at some stage, at least playing at an online casino once, or using some type of online sports betting service. This is a huge percentage of Australian people that have used an online casino.

Now, online casino play, and online gambling in Australia is governed by the Interactive Gambling Act of 2001. And in reality, this makes online casino play illegal for Australian online gamblers unless they are playing at a locally licensed online casino. So reading between the lines, this shows that many Australian online gamblers are most likely breaking the law and doing their online gambling at an illegal online casino site.

One of the most promising results of this, from a point of view of online casino play eventually becoming legal for Australian online gamblers, is that there was no correlation between online gambling, and the rate of social problems that gambling in general has been causing in Australia. Although the research does state that over time, this may prove to be the situation, it can be quoted as saying that, “convenience and ease of access, ability to play in private, high speed continuous gambling, player incentives and advertising, and the immersive nature of the Internet.”

Another interesting fact we can pull out of this research into the habits of Australian online gamblers, is that the segment of people who regularly play at some type of online casino, who are least likely to develop gambling related problems, are online poker players.

So overall, this is actually a pretty good set of research results, that shows the online gambling industry in Australia as being less harmful than many people suspected.