Continue reading »]]> The RFMA (The national association against alcohol and drug addiction) held a conference on gambling addiction on February 7. Around 70 participants gathered in Stockholm for a full day program about pathways in and out of problem gambling.

Among the speakers were Fred Nyberg, professor at Uppsala University, the Faculty of Pharmacy, who gave a very informative talk about the neurobiological processes involved in addiction to drugs and gambling. Jakob Jonsson from Spelinstitutet told about pathways leading to gambling problems, with many examples from the clients he met during his long career as a CBT-therapist. The topic of therapy was more generally covered by Henrik Josephson and Lina Hedda from FORUM in Stockholm.

Anders Stymne had come all the way from Paris to tell us about what Swedish authorities have done throughout the years in terms of prevention of problem gambling and the development of treatment modalities. I myself held a presentation about changes in gambling and problem gambling in Sweden, as well as about why people gamble.

The presentations from the conference will be available at the RFMA website.

Continue reading »]]> This weekend I went on a study trip to Paris with the Board of Directors of the Swedish Gaming Board. Once a year we broaden our knowledge by visiting similar organizations in other countries. At these occasions, we also visit gambling companies, trade fairs and places of gambling that for various reasons are of current interest to us.

Our first stop in Paris was at the PMU – Pari Mutuel Urbain. This is a stated controlled French horse betting company that recently has expanded their business into online sports betting and poker. Then we went to the office of ARJEL – Autorité de Régulation des Jeux En Ligne (“The authority for regulation of online games”). It was interesting to learn how licenses for online gambling were issued and how the online market had developed in the recent year. In Sweden, there has for some years now been discussions about introducing a licensing system and therefore the Gaming Board closely follows the developments in other countries.

We spent the next day at Grosbois, the huge trotting horse training facility in the outskirts of Paris. Swedish trainer Anders Lindqvist showed us around and told us many fascinating stories from the world of trotting.

The highlight of the trip was the Prix d’Amérique – the world’s most prestigious trotting race. Around fifty thousand people had gathered at the hippodrome of Vincennes. We met plenty of other Swedes there and most of them hoped that the Swedish horse Maharajah would win. Maharajah’s odds dropped dramatically as the Swedes at the track bet heavily. However, the favorite and last year winner Ready Cash had no problem winning the race. I spent a modest €50 on various bets during the day and won exactly the same sum (entirely thanks to a big trifecta bet that I was invited to join).

The Director General of the Gaming Board has blogged about the same trip, highly recommended!

Anders Lindqvist with a promising trotter

Ready Cash's triumphal procession

Continue reading »]]> The value of anthropological gambling research is discussed in a forum in the journal Suomen Antropologi (2011, vol. 36, no. 1). The issue was published this spring but came to my attention only a few days ago. The forum contains short articles by five Finnish scholars. It is an excellent introduction to how anthropologists can think about gambling.

Pauliina Raento, research director at the Finnish Foundation for Gambling Research, introduces the topic. She writes that “The time is ripe for anthropologists to take a fresh look at gambling.” Pauliina also makes the good observation that: “A closer look at gambling can also expand anthropology’s interdisciplinary horizons. Many outsiders perceive anthropology as an insular discipline which fails to use its full potential.”

The four other contributions to the forum deal with online poker, immigrant gambling in Finland, the social rewards of gambling, and gambling and consumption. The short articles give an idea of the novel and interesting perspectives offered by anthropological research into these aspects of gambling.

Suomen Antropologi is the journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society. it is available online with EBSCO Academic Search Complete.

Continue reading »]]> The prevalence of gambling problems in Sweden remained largely unchanged between 2009 and 2010. There was a trend towards lower prevalence – down from 2.2 percent to 1.9 percent – but it was not statistically significant. Gambling problems were defined as respondents scoring three points or higher on the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI). The information is presented in a recent paper published in the journal International Gambling Studies, discussing data from the first two prevalence studies in the Swedish longitudinal gambling studies (SWELOGS).

This means that gambling problems, according to the three national prevalence surveys conducted this far in Sweden, have on a population level remained largely unchanged since 1999. However, gambling problems among young males doubled between 1999 and 2009.

Additional data on problem gambling prevalence is offered by the general health surveys conducted by the Swedish National Institute of Public Health (SNIPH). These surveys include four questions on gambling problems derived from the SOGS instrument, which have been selected because they perform well in discriminating between problem and problem-free gamblers. The following figures (source) show the percentages (confidence interval within brackets) of people answering in the affirmative to one or more of the four questions:

2004 4.1 % (3,7-4,4)
2005 3.8 % (3,3-4,3)
2006 3,8 % (3,3-4,3)
2007 4,2 % (3,6-4,7)
2008 3,7 % (3,3-4,0)
2009 3,7 % (3,3-4,0)
2010 3,3 % (2,9-3,6)

Another set of measurements is the yearly surveys made by the state owned gambling company Svenska Spel. No standard instrument for measuring problem gambling is used but rather a set of questions resembling parts of the SOGS-instrument (video of presentation, table shown at 4:00 minutes, no confidence intervals are presented):

1999 1,8 %
2000 1,5 %
2001 1,2 %
2002 1,9 %
2003 1,2 %
2004 1,3 %
2005 1,6 %
2006 1,4 %
2007 1,9 %
2008 1,5 %
2009 1,2 %
2010 1,4 %

What can we conclude from these three sets of measurements of problem gambling in Sweden? One thing is sure. The prevalence of gambling problems in the general population have remained about the same between 1999 and 2010. There are indications of a sudden increase in problems in 2007, which would coincide with the poker boom. This would be expected, since a lot of people played internet poker and a substantial proportion of them experienced gambling problems. It has been estimated that about one third of the players showed some sign of risky or problematic gambling behavior.

Gambling problems thus tend to remain, over longer periods of time, at the same level despite the introduction of new risky forms of gambling. This can be explained by preventive measures being effective, an increasing awareness of the risks of gambling, and that players adapt to new forms of gambling and a higher risks level.

Continue reading »]]> Gambling, Space, and Time: Shifting Boundaries and Cultures is a new book from the University of Nevada Press. It includes a chapter on Swedish horse betting, written by me.

About the book
“The eight essays in Gambling, Space, and Time use a global and interdisciplinary approach to examine two significant areas of gambling studies that have not been widely explored—the ever-changing boundaries that divide and organize gambling spaces, and the cultures, perceptions, and emotions related to gambling. The contributors represent a variety of disciplines: history, geography, sociology, anthropology, political science, and law. The essays consider such topics as the impact of technological advances on gambling activities, the role of the nation-state in the gambling industry, and the ways that cultural and moral values influence the availability of gambling and the behavior of gamblers. The case studies offer rich new insights into a gambling industry that is both a global phenomenon and a powerful engine of local change.” (University of Nevada Press)

Editors
Pauliina Raento and David G. Schwartz.

Contributors
Per Binde, Larry Gragg, Sytze F. Kingma, Steven Andrew Light, Kathryn L. R. Rand, Pauliina Raento, David G. Schwartz, and Denise von Herrmann.

Reviews
“Gambling, Space, and Time extends the available research on gambling, and therefore makes a significant contribution to the literature. There is no doubt that the contributors have done careful and extensive original research.”
— James Smith, author of The Business of Risk: Commercial Gambling in Mainstream America.

“This book looks at gambling spaces from a number of perspectives: legal, political, social, and geographic; and discusses how such spaces have evolved over time. The essays provide insights into how this rapidly expanding but controversial activity has evolved in America and Europe, and where it will emerge in cyberspace.”
— William R. Eadington, Director, Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming, University of Nevada, Reno.

About the book chapter Trotting territory: The cultural realm of Swedish horse betting
Human beings in social interaction create life-worlds with shared symbols, meanings, and values. Some forms of gambling, among them horse betting, therefore tend to evolve into bounded cultural domains with specific beliefs, norms, and traditions. Gambling becomes the core of a world-building activity. This chapter concerns one such cultural realm established by gambling – the one created and re-created at the Åby trotting track in Sweden at the days of racing. The study builds on participant observation and analyses the social interactions and cultural meanings that structure people’s experience of Åby trotting track. Author: Per Binde.

Order the book from the University of Nevada Press

Order the book from the Swedish bookseller Adlibris

Continue reading »]]> “Perspektiv på spelande och spelproblem” (Perspectives on gambling and problem gambling) is the title of a recent publication (in Swedish) from the Swedish National Institute of Public Health (SNIPH). It is an easy to read booklet that shows the breadth of today’s gambling research and presents a number of different perspectives on gambling. The publication is primarily for people whose work involves coming into contact with gambling and problem gamblers.

The booklet builds on three previous publications from the SNIPH. One is about biological causes of pathological gambling, the other presents a bio-psycho-social model of gambling addiction, and the third is my own report Gambling involvement and motivation: A review of social science research.

Read Perspektiv på spelande och spelproblem (PDF)

Continue reading »]]> “Why people gamble” (or something similar) is the title of one of my most appreciated lectures. It is in demand by gambling companies, treatment agencies and at a variety of academic meetings and conferences. Last Thursday I delivered the lecture to a group of gambling regulators from the Nordic countries, at a seminar organized by the Gaming Board for Sweden.

In the first part of the lecture, I give an outline of the distribution of gambling in the societies of the pre-colonial world and discuss the factors that promoted or restrained gambling: the presence of commercially used money, social inequality, inter-tribal gambling and nomadism. In the second part, I present my model of the motives that individuals have for gambling in western societies of today. The model comprises five motivational dimensions: the dream of hitting the jackpot and transforming one’s life, social rewards, intellectual challenge, mood change induced by playing, and the fundamental motive for all gambling, the chance of winning, viewed as a psychobiological as well as a symbolic and cultural entity. Of course, the lecture is tailored to meet the specific interests of various audiences.

Continue reading »]]> On September 1, I held a presentation about gambling and problem gambling to Finnish journalists interested in addiction issues. The journalists had gathered here in Gothenburg for the 27th Northern Media Seminar on Addictions, organized by the A-Clinic foundation in Helsinki. In all, eleven academics and practitioners lectured at the international part of the seminar about various aspects of addiction, such as alcohol abuse and mutual support groups. The title of my presentation was The history of problem gambling in Sweden. Here’s the abstract:

I begin by outlining a timeline of gambling and attitudes to gambling in Sweden. Although problem gambling has existed for as long as gambling itself, the concept of addiction to gambling, in the medical sense, has become dominant in the recent decades. Gambling providers’ responses to concerns about gambling being a public health problem have changed from initial denial, to lip service, followed by half-hearted commitment to responsible gambling and finally to current good commitment. This development has in part been driven by gambling policy issues in the EU context, making responsible gambling a valuable commercial and political asset. I present some facts about problem gambling in Sweden, and about prevention and treatment.

Continue reading »]]> For more than a decade, I have had CEFOS – Center for Public Sector Research – as a base for my research. However, there is nowadays not a big need at the University of Gothenburg for a special unit dedicated to public sector research. CEFOS has thus been closed down.

I will continue my research into gambling at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg. The School of Global Studies is a multidisciplinary department including social anthropology, human ecology, human rights, peace and development research, regional studies, and the study of world culture and globalized heritage.

My new postal and visting address:

Per Binde, Associate professor
University of Gothenburg
School of Global Studies
P.O. Box 700
SE-40530 Gothenburg
Sweden
Visiting address: Övre Husargatan 36, floor 4, room 408

Continue reading »]]> My paper A mutual support group for young problem gamblers has been published by the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction. The paper is available as an “online first” publication, klick here.

Abstract

A Swedish mutual support group for young problem gamblers is described and discussed. During the study period, 116 weekly meetings occurred, usually involving six to ten participants; in total, 69 problem gamblers (66 male and three female), aged 17–25, and 23 partners and friends attended the meetings. Half the gamblers had problems with Internet poker, one fifth with electronic gambling machines, and the rest with other forms of gambling and computer gaming. Nearly half the problem gamblers participated in under five mutual support meetings, while just over a third attended ten or more meetings. Gambling problems ceased or lessened among most participants in ten or more meetings. In some cases, attending just one or a few meetings had a positive impact on the problems. This mutual support group provides relatively effective help to adolescents and young adults with gambling problems, offering a valuable alternative and complement to professional treatment.

This is a companion article to A Swedish Mutual Support Society of Problem Gamblers, which recently was published by the same journal. The first article outlines the history of Swedish mutual support societies of problem gamblers and describes the way of working of one of them, while the second article focuses on one specific mutual support group and discusses its effectiveness.

My research on mutual support groups for problem gamblers have been presented in a book in Swedish (2010): Syna korten: En insats mot spelproblem bland unga. The book focuses on gambling problems among adolescents and young adults and covers also preventive efforts targeting these age groups.