An exploration of the awareness, exposure and perceptions of gambling marketing through sport on children and young people aged 14-17 throughout the island of Ireland.

Previous youth and gambling marketing research has explored awareness and exposure to gambling marketing across many parts of the western world, including Canada (Korn, 2005), Australia (Hing et al., 2014) and Great Britain (McGee, 2020). The saturation of marketing messages and the innovative tactics deployed by gambling operators across both the social and traditional media broadcast of sport presents risks for vulnerable populations, including children and young people. However, we cannot assume that all Western geographic locations are culturally and socially homogenous, hence, further research is necessary.

This qualitative study contributes to the international literature on the impact of gambling marketing, by exploring how children and young people consume sport through traditional and social media sources on the island of Ireland. Our focus was to understand the awareness, exposure and perceptions toward sports gambling marketing.

Nine focus groups, segregated by age (14-15, 16-17, 18-24) were completed in three border regions on the island of Ireland. Convenience sampling was used to recruit 71 children and young people (girls/women = n=29/41%; boys/men = n=42/59%). Findings indicated high levels of awareness and exposure amongst all age ranges to sports gambling marketing, with frequent references made to both integrated, mass and micro-targeting marketing strategies. Participants also saw gambling marketing as a normalised part of sport, viewing it as a better fit than other “unhealthy” sponsorships such as fast food. The findings indicated participants misunderstood harms associated with sports gambling marketing and evidence of third-party effects (disassociation) were noted across all age ranges.