Australian Gambling Operators Are Beginning To Target Women With Ads

Gambling ads in Australia continue to make their way to consumers despite the gaming regulator tightening regulations in recent time. The new trend in the gambling advertising market is to target women and get them to gamble.

Samantha Thomas, associate professor of public health at Deakin University said that research had showed that for the longest time, women gamblers preferred luck-based gambling such as lotto and bingo games compared to skill-based games.

As the landscape of betting changes across the world, Australian women have also shown a change in their gambling preferences.

Thomas has published many papers and studies on the effects of gambling and its commercialization on Australians. This time, she has launched a new study to explore the strategy of operators to capture the female betting market via carefully placed gambling advertisements. The study also examined whether the saturation of gambling ads is making the activity more socially acceptable for young women.

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Initial studies found that women are now gambling on a more diverse level, as interests on skill-based gambling like horse racing continues to increase. Female attitude towards gambling has also become more accepting, especially amongst younger women.

In a statement, Thomas said,

We are also seeing that younger women have more positive views towards gambling. Our initial studies show that they’re more socially accepting of gambling and say it’s something they do as part of a night out with friends

Thomas said that their team noticed more gambling companies tailoring their advertisements towards the women. She used cited one of the recent cases of female-targeted phenomena where fashion was tied to the spring racing carnival to attract more females into one of the biggest betting events in Australia. Female celebrities have joined the wave as they tagged bookmakers on their spring carnival posts on Instagram.

Casinos have pokie machines that are using brands that are more appealing to younger women such as Ellen, Britney Spears and The Big Bang Theory. Bookies like Sportsbet are also offering betting events on television programs such as The Bachelor and The Bachelorette which are very popular with women.

These targeted ads come after a TV-ad restriction was made earlier this year to protect younger audiences from gambling exposure. In May, the Turnbull government announced that they will launch reforms on betting advertisements aired during live coverages of sporting events such as football and cricket matches. The new regulation will restrict bookmakers from airing gambling ads five minutes before and after the live coverage, or before 8:30 p.m., whichever comes first.