New research shows an increasing number of Australians are gambling online and entering "risky” territory.

The Australian National University’s centre for gambling research found people have continued to gamble at elevated levels, after spiking post-pandemic. 

The director of the gambling research centre, Dr Aino Suomi, said the "new normal” of gambling participation – which included entering lotteries – had plateaued at around 60%, an increase from about 50% of the adult population who participated in gambling during the Covid shut downs.

The ANU research found a slight decrease in the number of participants in the 12 months since the poll was taken, dropping from 61.3% to 60.3%. Pre-Covid, gambling levels were sitting around 65.6%.

But the number of people participating in gambling with risk increased from 11.6% last year to 13.6% in 2024, the research found.

The latest poll also found online gambling was becoming increasingly popular, with 33.4% of respondents placing bets on those platforms in the last 12 months. Online gambling participation was highest for betting on sports and racing, the report found.

"Online gambling has exponentially increased, and should now be considered one of the main gambling platforms,” Suomi said.

"The unlimited access to online gambling has the potential to cause real harm if not properly addressed.”

The data was collected between April 2019 and January 2024. A separate report using the same data examined how gambling harm extended to others with about 1.2 million adults reporting being personally affected by someone else’s gambling in the last 12 months.

"Individuals who were affected by someone else’s gambling tended to be younger (18-24), earning a lower income, experiencing problems related to their own gambling and dealing with loneliness or psychological distress,” Suomi said.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jul/29/online-gambling-in-australia-has-exponentially-increased-new-report-warns">