Record $478M Spent on Responsible Gaming Amid Rising Concerns
The gaming industry stepped up, putting its money where its mouth was, spending a record almost half a billion dollars on its responsible gaming message in 2023. That’s up more than 70% from 2017, but it also comes at a time when the industry is making record-breaking profits.
Responsible Gaming Spend up 72% in Seven Years.
Record Investment in Responsible Gaming
The American Gaming Association was out with Responsible Gaming Spend this week as the industry’s Responsible Gaming Education Month drew to a close. A record-breaking $478.1 million was spent fighting problem gambling in 2023.
The spending was broken down as follows:
- Problem Gambling Support: $26.1 million
- Responsible Gaming Research: $31.8 million
- Responsible Gaming Education/Consumer: 107.7 million
- Responsible Gaming Education/Programs: $122.4 million
- Customer Service Interactions: 135.4 million
This was an increase of 72% over what the gaming industry spent just seven short years ago, in 2017. While it is an admirable amount of investment in a thorny social ill, it is probably important to point out that the AGA has also stated that gross gaming revenue in the US last year was $65.52 billion.
More than $11.92 billion of that came from the Sports Betting Industry, which is growing by leaps and bounds post-PASPA and is now legal in more than 36 states. In fact, sports betting revenue was up 44.5% from the previous year.
The AGA claimed gross commercial casino revenue of $40.28 million in 2017, which means revenue has grown over 62% in the intervening seven years. Factor in a little inflation and spending on responsible gaming looks mostly flat as a percentage of revenue.
But Problems on the Horizon
Fairleigh Dickinson University recently released a poll showing that 10% of young men are at risk for problem gaming compared to 3% of the rest of the population.
Another paper from UCLA academics seemed to correlate decreased consumer credit scores with states that recently passed sports betting laws, and the list of other recently released papers or studies raising the Spector of problem gambling in young men continues to grow.
The explosive growth of sports gambling amongst young men since 2018 may have caught the gaming industry flat-footed, and while spending nearly half a billion dollars is a start, there is reason to worry that new research may show that much more needs to be done to protect this particularly vulnerable subset of gamblers.
The AGA will need to corral its many casinos and, more importantly, its many new online sportsbooks in the short term into spending much, much more than .75% of gross revenues on a problem that is just starting to become visible to not just the general public but state regulators as well.
This impactful rise in RG spending demonstrates the legal industry’s dedication to fostering a safe and informed gaming environment– American Gaming Association, Senior Vice President, Press Release
