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The unexpected appeal of gambling through social media

Blog 9th Jan 2025

Social media is increasingly being used to advertise, organise, and facilitate gambling – and in many cases, unregulated gambling.

Unregulated gambling refers to gambling products offered without proper licensing or oversight from a recognised regulatory authority. In the Great Britain, where this work took place, this means operating without a license from the Gambling Commission – but the concept applies globally wherever gambling activities occur outside the jurisdiction of local or national regulators.

On social media, this includes lotteries and prize draws where participants pay a small entry fee, in the hope of winning a prize, or the promotion of novel products by offshore operators, such as crypto casinos. 

Unsurprisingly, those engaging with unlicensed providers are at risk of getting scammed or of ending up with prizes much smaller than advertised. 

Social media platforms also offer gambling-like games, often operated by third parties, which do not need to meet gambling regulations, but include similar features and mechanisms as casino and slot games.

Regulated gambling operators are just as active on social media. For example, they advertise on users’ feeds or use social messaging apps such as Whatsapp to host chats and take bets. 

At BIT, we have a deep interest in understanding people’s digital behaviours. As part of our work on gambling and consumer protection, we wanted to understand how social media was blurring the boundaries of different forms of gambling and how this might lead to higher risk for consumers.

We interviewed a wide range of people who had gambled through social media – using both regulated and unregulated products, as well as games that had features similar to gambling – to find out what motivated them to do so and what their experience was like. 

Their experiences ranged from entering community raffles for baby clothes on Facebook, to sending money to WhatsApp friends to place bets for them, or even navigating to illegal websites promoted on social media. 

Based on the experiences we heard, we created three composite personas to help understand and explain their motivations and desires: “Idle Scrollers”, “Gamblepreneurs” and “Eyes on the Prize”.

The Idle Scroller

Katy has a habit of scrolling her Facebook feed while she’s out and about or bored at work. One day, she sees a colourful ad for a slot game with free spins, available directly on Facebook’s platform. 

She likes to bet on football games, but has never tried slot games before. The idea of a free spin without leaving Facebook makes her curious enough to click, especially because she trusts Facebook as a platform more than gambling companies. 

She’s not sure who operates the game, but nevertheless starts to play with her free tokens. When they run out, she pays a few pounds to keep playing. She does not think of herself as someone who gambles, so she would not go back to play the slot game unless prompted. 

But prompted she is: ever since the first spin, her Facebook feed has been populated with gambling ads, offering a new way to fill her downtime. 

As a result, Katy is now playing slot games whilst on the move, because they are easy to access and don’t require too much concentration.

The Gamblepreneur

John sees himself as a ‘seasoned gambler’: he’s tried many of the products available on the market and believes he can make money from gambling if he does it strategically. 

To do so, he follows tipsters on TikTok telling him which teams to bet on and which sites to use to get the best deals. One of these tipsters introduces him to crypto casinos, where he can use cryptocurrencies to place bets. 

To John, this sounds exciting – a crypto boom might further boost his winnings. The tipster does not mention that crypto casinos are not licensed in Great Britain, so John clicks on the link without being aware of the increased risks of engaging with an illegal website. 

He soon has a terrible experience: the operator’s cryptocurrency used for betting plummets and John’s winnings lose all their value. 

Yet, this doesn’t discourage him from experimenting with new gambling products, because he still sees them as a good way to make money. He keeps browsing social media for attractive odds offered in betting groups or to hear about the latest trends on the gambling black market. 

He hopes that by making payments using his PayPal account or credit card when possible, he can avoid losing money to scammers.

The Eyes on the Prize

Sophie is a full-time mum of two babies and is a member of many social media groups for parents in her area. In one of these groups, she hears about a raffle for baby clothes that takes place weekly. 

Although she doesn’t like risking her money in any way, she’s attracted by the prize at stake – after all, it’d be nice to get a box of brand new baby clothes for the £2 entry fee she sends to the organiser via PayPal. 

She starts to participate in similar raffles regularly, often organised by local shops, but keeps her focus on those specifically relevant to her instead of going for valuable prizes. 

To enter the draws, she comments a number between 1-99 under Facebook posts, then waits until the group administrator shares a video of themself drawing a winning number. 

She doesn’t really see these raffles as gambling, but as a fun way for local shops to promote their products. She is however concerned that the draw might be manipulated, especially if she doesn’t know the group administrator personally. 

But Sophie keeps playing nevertheless – after all, she doesn’t mind losing a few pounds, as long as she wins something useful every once in a while.

Social harms

What binds these three stories together is an inherent risk of harm: firstly, gambling-related harms, such as gambling more money than intended, which are higher for unregulated than for regulated products due to a lack of protection measures, and secondly, more general consumer harms, such as falling victim to fraud. 

Katy, who used to only place the occasional bet on football, is now habitually playing slot games – a form of gambling associated with higher risks than others. When John accesses a crypto casino, he engages with the black market where there are no consumer protection measures in place. Finally, Sophie repeatedly shares her personal details with strangers she never met in real life, so that she can enter raffles. 

The social media platforms used by them promote or even facilitate these risky behaviours: that’s where Katy saw slot ads and started to play, where John received a link to a black market gambling website and where Sophie’s favourite raffles are organised. 

So what can be done? Read our full report to learn more about why and how participants gambled through social media and what actions we recommend for social media platforms and regulators.

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