Availability restrictions and mandatory precommitment in land-based gambling: effects on online substitutes and total...

Gambling causes important harms in societies. According to the public health approach, the most effective policies to reduce harms target full populations. Availability restrictions and mandatory precommitment are among the most effective measures. However, restrictions on the availability of some gambling products or channels may also be offset by increased consumption in other products. Substitution effects can have negative public health impacts due to differing harm potential across different gambling products. This paper uses longitudinal sales data (2019-2022) from the Finnish gambling monopoly Veikkaus. During the observation period, the availability of gambling was restricted in Finland due to subsequent waves of Covid-19-related restrictions. In addition, the gambling monopoly introduced mandatory precommitment to land-based EGMs. We focus on how these restrictive policy changes impacted the total consumption of gambling and possible substitution effects.

The Finnish gambling monopoly provided weekly theoretical loss data per gambling product category and gambling channel (online, land-based) for the period of January 2019 - July 2022 based on a statutory obligation. We analysed the effects of availability restrictions and other public health measures on the consumption of different products using descriptive time series and regression analyses. We compared the sale of land-based products to online equivalents at product category level and included main policy change periods in the models.

Total consumption of gambling declined during 2019-2022 mainly due to reduced land-based electronic gambling machine (EGM) consumption. Declines in land-based EGM sales were not offset by online alternatives or other close substitutes in the long term. However, during the first wave of Covid-19, there was an observable substitution of land-based table games by online alternatives and land-based horse betting and possibly sports betting by online horse betting. Overall, the results also show that Covid-19 functioned as a boost to an already existing trend of increasing digitalisation of gambling.

The study provides empirical support for the effectiveness of public health-oriented policies in reducing the total consumption of gambling. Availability restrictions and mandatory precommitment are therefore likely to also reduce the burden of harms of gambling to individuals and societies.