'Searching for excitement' exploring the gambling experiences of adult Australian sports fans
Date
2025
Authors
Cleland, J.
Palmer, C.
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Journal article
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Managing Sport and Leisure, online, 2025; online:1-9
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Abstract
This study addresses the gambling experiences of 777 adult (aged 18+) sports fans in Australia, collected via an online survey from July 2024 to September 2024. Although 86% were aware of gambling advertising in Australian sports, just under one third (31%) gamble on sports, with a majority gambling low amounts of money on an infrequent basis. Focusing on the reasons behind those who gamble, we apply Bourdieu’s concepts of field, habitus, and social and cultural capital to explain how they sought a quest for excitement to accrue social and cultural capital in matches they watched, rather than trying to acquire economic capital. Although they primarily gamble via apps on their mobile phone, gambling discussions with family and friends on apps like Snapchat and WhatsApp maintain social and cultural capital as part of their broader experience of being a sports fan.
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Copyright 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Access Condition Notes: This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License