Here’s a third paper, showing that sports betting increases domestic violence. When the home team suffers an upset loss while sports betting is legal, domestic violence that day goes up by 9% for the day, with lingering effects. It is estimated 10 million Americans are victims of domestic violence each year.
I was suspicious of the methodology here (e.g. the difference between ‘when the home team loses violence goes up by 9% if and only if gambling is legalized’ and ‘when the home team loses violence goes up by 10% if gambling is not legalized but by 10.9% if it is legalized’ is something that I don’t trust sociology to track honestly).
I went to take a look at the paper, and do not think it really supports the argument at all.
The relevant charts I believe are on p26 here. The first one shows how intimate partner violence (IPV) varies with ‘expected outcome of game’ and ‘actual outcome of game’:
Note that ‘expected outcome of game’ is the thing that actually seems predictive, not ‘actual outcome of game’. When the home team is expected to lose, domestic violence is high even if they win. When the home team is expected to win, domestic violence is low even if they lose (though even lower if they win).
This looks to me like a study that’s been massively confounded by other effects. Perhaps good sports teams tend to be favored to win, and also to be in wealthy regions with little domestic violence? Regardless of the reason, though, this makes me very suspicious of anything this study claims to show.
The second chart shows how IPV varies with the outcome of the game based on whether sports betting is legal:
This does, indeed, show that areas with legalized sports betting had higher rates of domestic violence when the home team lost (~0.45 vs ~0.43). However, it also showed that they had lower rates of domestic violence when the home team won, by more. (~0.38 vs ~0.42). If we assume that half of games are wins and half are losses (seems...pretty reasonable?), I believe this chart depicts legalized sports betting lowering domestic violence (though again I don’t know if I believe that either due to how obviously confounded this data is).
Somehow we seem to have gone from “a clearly confounded paper that (if you believe it) shows sports betting on average lowering domestic violence” to “there is strong evidence of sports betting increasing domestic violence”.
I agree. It also would be very odd if there was a high increase overall that that the paper would not directly state that as their main finding. Instead, the paper’s main claim is that sports betting “amplifies” emotions and impacts on domestic violence.
As you point out, if there’s an unexpected loss, the domestic violence rate increases more in places with gambling, but, on the other hand, if there’s an expected win, the domestic violence rate decreases more in places with gambling.
I mean, it’s depressing in a variety of ways.
The argument, “allowing people to trick money away from a certain class of person is bad because that class of person is likely to abuse their family when upset” is not very motivating for me, personally.
My distaste for exploitative betting companies comes from a place of compassion for those extorted. The domestic abuse fact lowers my compassion for the abusers. It then seems like I’m being threatened into protecting the abusers.
Imagine them saying, “you’d better protect us from foolishly wasting our money, or else we’ll get mad and abuse our families!” Uh, this makes me inclined to search for solutions that have nothing to do with gambling and more to do with detecting and preventing domestic abuse.
I was suspicious of the methodology here (e.g. the difference between ‘when the home team loses violence goes up by 9% if and only if gambling is legalized’ and ‘when the home team loses violence goes up by 10% if gambling is not legalized but by 10.9% if it is legalized’ is something that I don’t trust sociology to track honestly).
I went to take a look at the paper, and do not think it really supports the argument at all.
The relevant charts I believe are on p26 here. The first one shows how intimate partner violence (IPV) varies with ‘expected outcome of game’ and ‘actual outcome of game’:
Note that ‘expected outcome of game’ is the thing that actually seems predictive, not ‘actual outcome of game’. When the home team is expected to lose, domestic violence is high even if they win. When the home team is expected to win, domestic violence is low even if they lose (though even lower if they win).
This looks to me like a study that’s been massively confounded by other effects. Perhaps good sports teams tend to be favored to win, and also to be in wealthy regions with little domestic violence? Regardless of the reason, though, this makes me very suspicious of anything this study claims to show.
The second chart shows how IPV varies with the outcome of the game based on whether sports betting is legal:
This does, indeed, show that areas with legalized sports betting had higher rates of domestic violence when the home team lost (~0.45 vs ~0.43). However, it also showed that they had lower rates of domestic violence when the home team won, by more. (~0.38 vs ~0.42). If we assume that half of games are wins and half are losses (seems...pretty reasonable?), I believe this chart depicts legalized sports betting lowering domestic violence (though again I don’t know if I believe that either due to how obviously confounded this data is).
Somehow we seem to have gone from “a clearly confounded paper that (if you believe it) shows sports betting on average lowering domestic violence” to “there is strong evidence of sports betting increasing domestic violence”.
I find this somewhat depressing.
I agree. It also would be very odd if there was a high increase overall that that the paper would not directly state that as their main finding. Instead, the paper’s main claim is that sports betting “amplifies” emotions and impacts on domestic violence.
As you point out, if there’s an unexpected loss, the domestic violence rate increases more in places with gambling, but, on the other hand, if there’s an expected win, the domestic violence rate decreases more in places with gambling.
I mean, it’s depressing in a variety of ways. The argument, “allowing people to trick money away from a certain class of person is bad because that class of person is likely to abuse their family when upset” is not very motivating for me, personally.
My distaste for exploitative betting companies comes from a place of compassion for those extorted. The domestic abuse fact lowers my compassion for the abusers. It then seems like I’m being threatened into protecting the abusers.
Imagine them saying, “you’d better protect us from foolishly wasting our money, or else we’ll get mad and abuse our families!” Uh, this makes me inclined to search for solutions that have nothing to do with gambling and more to do with detecting and preventing domestic abuse.