Sports betting or gambling? A study on determining perception on sports betting

Abstract

Within the sports literature, the gambling industry is seen as the main sector while sports betting is seen as one form of gambling. However, there are some lexical and structural differences between the international literature and Turkish literature concerning the idea of betting. The aim of this study was to determine how the concept of sports betting is perceived in Turkey. The participants in this research consisted of 363 students who were studying at Anadolu University. Participants responded to a survey featuring questions related to their personal details, the nature of their involvement in sports betting, their thoughts on the difference between sports betting and gambling and their perception of sports betting. Frequencies and percentages were used to report the data and the statistical significance of any differences of interest were assessed by means of Chi-squared. A majority of the males (60%) reported some involvement with sport betting compared with a much smaller proportion of the females (14.4%). Just over a half of those who were involved participated at least once a week. The major sport activity that was the object of the betting was football (88.41%) and the use of betting platforms was fairly evenly split between the internet (51.22%) and iddaa dealers (48.78%). Differences by gender and participation were found with regard to perceptions about sports betting and its relationship to gambling. Those who participated in sport betting were more likely to identify sports betting with sport and less likely to agree that both sports betting and gambling were bad habits (54.9% compared to 71.9%)