News release

From: Flinders University

Youth among targets of gambling addiction intervention drive

Hundreds of international experts in gambling addiction are urging a more coordinated approach to enhance interventions and therapies, while aligning research priorities to tackle the escalating problem.

Gambling is now a legal activity in 80% of countries and has expanded considerably in the past decade.  While a very small minority of people who gamble meet the diagnostic criteria of a gambling disorder, the wider harms from gambling include financial, emotional, relationship and other harms, decreased work performance, and criminality.

Priority groups requiring support include vulnerable and minority groups, young people, close family members, as well as areas such as technological innovations, advertising practices, the convergence of gaming and gambling, and co-occurring conditions, the experts say in a collective article in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions.

For example, adolescents and young people are increasingly getting drawn into gambling by innovative advertising, new technologies and gambling-like activities in gaming and esports or in-play betting, says Flinders University Professor Zsolt Demetrovics, a lead author of the new study.

“Gambling is a growing public health concern, yet there is no guidance available to prioritise research focuses,” says Professor Demetrovics, director of the Flinders University Institute for Mental Health and Wellbeing.

According to a recent UK Gambling Commission report, 26% of teenagers have gambled for money in the past year, and 0.7% have experienced problem gambling.

“Effective early prevention, strong evidence-based policy and treatment of problem gambling among prevention programs are priorities of the survey,” he says.

“Evaluating and tailoring existing measures were prioritised more highly than new interventions, and identifying factors underlying treatment seeking, drop-out and relapse was also considered a priority.”

With limited research resources, the international group surveyed more than 300 experts in 35 countries to recommend 25 top priorities in a more rational and systematic approach to build robust prevention and treatment programs tailored to different countries and gambling addictions.

After identifying the core set of priorities for gambling research, the survey group plans to keep working on a more systematic, transparent and democratic system to maximise research efforts and keep stakeholders informed.

Despite the personal, familial and societal harms, gambling has only recently started to be recognised as a serious public health concern.

“We know better research-backed strategies are needed to tackle related harms and reduce their impact, so this will require increased levels of research and action at national and international levels,” says Professor Demetrovics.

“With a limit to financial and human capacities for gambling research, it is important to focus on the most pressing questions and establish priorities to properly inform stakeholders in gambling-related domains, including research communities, policymakers, and funding organisations.”

The article, ‘Research priorities in gambling: Findings of a large-scale expert study’ (2025) by Andrea Czakó, Marc N Potenza, David C Hodgins, Shu M Yu, Anise MS Wu, Susana Jiminez-Murcia, Henrietta Bowden-Jones, Daniel King, Joël Billieux, Beáta Bőthe, Dan J Stein, the Gambling Research Priority Setting Consortium and Zsolt Demetrovics has been published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions DOI: 10.1556/2006.2025.00072.

Acknowledgements: Researchers from Europe, Australia, North America, China and South Africa, comprising the Gambling Research Priority Setting Consortium, were involved in the study.