A new wave of Australian gambling advertising prominently featuring women and promoting betting odds on popular TV shows like The Bachelorette could be changing female attitudes to betting, researchers say.
Samantha Thomas, an associate professor at Deakin University, said wagering companies had traditionally run marketing campaigns in which women played "mostly decorative roles" or were "secondary characters in a male's betting experience", but now they were being featured as "protagonists".
Deakin University researchers pointed to a string of recent ad campaigns, including CrownBet's latest commercial featuring Australian actor and model Nicky Whelan, and various other bookmakers' female-focused Spring Racing Carnival promotions, which, they believed, were tailored marketing strategies.
"Women are gambling on a more diverse range of gambling products, and we are also seeing that younger women have more positive views towards gambling," Dr Thomas said.
"Our initial studies show they're more socially accepting of gambling and say it's something they do as part of a night out with friends."
One industry insider confirmed that the number of female betting customers had been gradually rising in recent years, but said women spent "less than a quarter of what male customers spend".
Dr Thomas and her team of gambling researchers are preparing a new study to analyse whether the saturation of advertising is making gambling seem more socially acceptable for young women, and why their attitudes towards some forms of gambling, such as sports-betting, may be changing.
She said female celebrities had begun tagging bookmakers in their Instagram posts, and bookmakers had started offering gambling markets on events popular with young people, like The Bachelor and The Bachelorette
"While there has been a significant amount of research on young men and gambling, there is almost no research on the gambling behaviours of young women in Australia," Dr Thomas said."We want to properly understand this behaviour so we can develop strategies to help reduce and prevent gambling harm among young women."
The launch of the new study comes as gambling companies face tough new restrictions on when and where they are able to advertise.
Sports-betting remains the fastest-growing form of gambling in Australia, having exploded in popularity year-on-year. New government figures show expenditure on sports-betting has rocketed a massive 500 per cent in the past decade, largely due to the take-up of internet and app-based wagering services.
