The researcher who led a study into rates of problem gambling in Ireland has defended the findings after criticism from the CEO of Flutter Entertainment last week. [Image: Shutterstock.com]
Conflicting views
A researcher in Ireland has defended the results of a recent gambling study that the CEO of Flutter Entertainment said were inaccurate. Peter Lunn, a professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), led the study which found that around 1 in 30 adults in Ireland are problem gamblers, equating to around 130,000 people.
Flutter CEO Peter Jackson claimed that ESRI used outdated sources to conduct the research, pointing to an NHS survey that showed the risk of gambling at 0.4% of the total population, which equates to 1 in 250 people.
ESRI data is “peer-reviewed, publicly available, and therefore open to scrutiny.”
Talking to Business sharing, Professor Lunn claimed that Jackson’s sources were outdated and said that a more recent report by the UK Gambling Commission actually contained a much larger estimate of problem gambling rates than the ESRI findings. Lunn also noted that ESRI’s data “has been peer-reviewed, is publicly available, and is therefore open to scrutiny.”
More realistic scanning methods
Peter Jackson was speaking last week on the day Flutter announced its total 2023 revenue of £9.5 billion ($12 billion). He admitted that he had not personally seen the ESRI report and was told that it suggested that gambling was “a larger societal issue than our real-world experience or any independent research we have seen would suggest.”
The levels of at-risk gamblers were ten times greater than in the 2019 study
The ESRI report was surprising because it showed that rates of problem gambling in the country were much higher than previously estimated. Levels of at-risk gamblers were ten times greater than in a 2019 study, and these people account for more than a quarter of the total amount gambled each year in Ireland.
Lunn explained that the much higher results in 2023 were because previous estimates came from face-to-face interviews rather than anonymously. He said people are usually more honest about their true behavior when they can answer questions confidentially.
Big changes are coming to Ireland
The Department of Justice and the enforcement team supporting the establishment of the Gambling Regulatory Authority in Ireland commissioned ESRI to conduct the study. The October publication came at a time when many industry stakeholders were lobbying against some of the restrictions that the expected Gambling Regulation Bill will introduce when it comes into force in the coming months.
Flutter Entertainment is headquartered in Ireland and has over 12.3 million monthly players on average worldwide.
One big concern relates to the ban on gambling-related advertising on television between 5:30am and 9pm daily. Racing broadcasters, in particular, believe the move could make broadcasting the event on television “economically unviable”.
