A recent discussion on the news brought this issue to my attention, and I wondered if others around the world have noticed similar trends.

In Australia, young men are currently bombarded with advertising for online sports betting. I've never placed a bet in my life and I still get ads for it between random YouTube videos, so I know what they look like. They are almost entirely targeted at young men - I can't think of another product besides personal hygiene that is so obviously and deliberately targeting this group.

We do have rules in this country for when these ads may be played (eg. not during live games). However, there are new concerns that online gambling, and problematic online gambling (eg. blew the whole pay check) has grown in use during our world-record-long lockdowns in 2020 and 2021.

The underlying issue seems to be that online sports betting has very quickly become normalised because of the saturation of advertising over the last decade.

I found a research piece from the last couple of years on the topic:

An alarming but not surprisingly high proportion (70%) of the 335 bettors who completed the survey were found to be at risk of, or already experiencing, gambling harm. Of these, 15% were considered to be over the threshold for 'problem gambling' as measured by the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI), a tool for estimating a person's risk of gambling problems and, consequently, harm.