It really is frequently said that more gambling (which includes playing the lottery) takes place during economic crises, but a study carried out by researchers at Universidad Carlos III of Madrid indicates that the opposite is true: within the last year, people have decreased the frequency of gambling activities, the number of gambling activities participated in plus the quantity of dollars gambled.
The gambling market has not escaped the alterations in people’s habits and behavior that the crisis has made. This is one on the conclusions that can be drawn from the newest report on Spaniards’ perception of games of likelihood, carried out by UC3M’s Instituto de Política y Gobernanza (IPOLGOB — Institute for Politics and Governance) in collaboration using the Codere Foundation and also the Centro de Estudios de Políticas y Legislación del Juego (Center for Gambling Policy and Legislation Research). “The novelty in 2012 was that the frequency with which men and women gambled as well because the quantity of games and quantity of income they gambled decreased,” the report reveals. “The amount gambled is controlled in all households, which includes the wealthier ones, and this situation specifically affects the lower-middle classes and immigrants,” comments 1 in the authors on the study, José Antonio Gómez Yañez, a professor in UC3M’s Political Science and Sociology Division.
The proportion spent on gambling as a a part of the leisure expenditures has decreased from 9.four to 7.7 %. In actual fact, when you’ll find economic complications inside a household, spending on gambling nearly disappears, with only tiny amounts nonetheless being spent on particular sorts of public games of possibility. “When there’s an financial crisis, what goes up will be the demand for luck, specifically those varieties of gambling that carry with them ‘hope’, the idea that a stroke of luck that fees very tiny dollars might bring relief or perhaps take care of the rest of their life,” points out professor Gómez Yañez. “Spaniards’ partnership with gambling is extremely rational and cold,” he adds, “as almost the complete population of Spain (more than 85%) gambles in some type, but they do so inside a quite objective way that may be dominated by social customs.
Unauthorized on line gambling sites
In 2012, Ley 13/2011 (Law 13/2011), Gambling Regulation, was established. It was approved by the Parliament as “a somewhat belated and hasty try to regulate an existing reality — on line gambling — that for the public administration was as well huge to handle,” comments an additional one particular on the study’s authors, José Ignacio Cases, Professor Emeritus of UC3M. Despite the fact that the regulation and concession of licenses has cleaned up the panorama of online gambling, in the report “we clearly present a single piece of unquestionable data: unauthorized sites are still open; they make unfair competition for operators who’re legally authorized to provide their item in Spanish territory and, in addition, they cause a significant loss of income for the Government,” denounces Professor Instances.
The percentage on the people today interviewed who reported having gambled on Web through the preceding three months was 4.2 percent of those in between ages 18 and 75. This came to 1,470,000 people, a somewhat higher number than the number reported by the Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego (government gambling regulatory physique). “The cause for this no doubt lies in that a part of these gamblers look to nevertheless be applying unauthorized internet sites,” the researchers indicate. “Although the info provided by interviewees in this respect may perhaps not be totally trustworthy, 21.4% stated that they had not registered on any gambling web-site not too long ago, which suggests that illegal internet websites continue to be in operation.”
The report reveals other information with regard to online gambling. The sociological profile of these gamblers is generally that of “Net customers,” that’s, younger persons (79% of them are under 45), mainly males (64,8%) in addition to a massive percentage who might be classified as upper or upper-middle class. 1 characteristic of Internet gambling is the fact that the participants gambled a considerable sum of revenue: an average of 37.1€ monthly. Geographically, they may be concentrated in Madrid, Catalonia, Andalusia and Valencia. Furthermore, additional that half of them take part in sports betting and poker in its several versions, although this is becoming regulated as a implies of access to the games organized by public operators (SELAE and When), which receive a sizable portion in the money which is moved by Internet gambling.