Cultural Attitudes Towards Betting: Exploring How Communities in Ocean City and South Africa View Sports Betting

The cultural attitudes towards legally permitted land-based and online gambling activities, such as sports betting, vary worldwide. Some places, such as Ocean City in New Jersey, the United States, have a more liberal approach because gambling in one form or another has been normalised over the past few decades and is less of a taboo topic. However, there are still pockets of society in New Jersey that still frown upon gambling, with many considering it as a taboo and something that people shouldn’t do. In comparison, cultural attitudes towards betting in other places like South Africa may not be as liberal. However, things have started to change in recent years, and betting is now more normalised than ever. Let’s dive in and take a closer look at some of the major factors that are helping to normalise online betting in New Jersey, South Africa, and beyond. Why are cultural attitudes towards betting changing? One of the biggest contributing factors helping shift cultural attitudes worldwide to being more tolerant towards betting is its transition to the digital realm and the ability to place wagers across the internet. Tighter regulations have led to safer sites, and a more hands-on approach towards protecting the gambler by actively promoting responsible gambling has also helped change attitudes. Many operators have started offering a range of safer gambling tools, making sports betting and other real money gambling activities a more socially accepted way for someone to spend their time and money. The attitudes also naturally shift after governments decide to go with a more relaxed approach towards gambling and don’t oppose it by having laws to punish gamblers who place sports bets on legally permitted sites. Today, anyone of legal age in South Africa and Ocean City can register a free account on a handful of fully licensed and regulated iGaming sites to place sports bets and play thousands of online casino games with high or above-average RTP% (return to player) payout rates. What are the most popular forms of legal online gambling activities in South Africa? Besides sports betting, South African citizens also now enjoy playing the aviator game and hundreds of other crash games, classic table & card games, feature-rich online slot machines, online scratchcards, bingo & lottery-style games. Today’s most popular computer-generated real money gambling games are often playable from as little as $/€/£0.10 or $/€/£0.20 (R2.00 or R4.00) per spin, hand or round, and many of the highly sophisticated live dealer games are playable from around R2.00 to R10.00, depending on the game. How is responsible gambling promoted in Ocean City and South Africa? To ensure players who sign up to these sites never spend more than they can afford, they are advised to set a reasonable budget before depositing. The other way that people can remain within their budgets is never to chase their losses and never log into their chosen iGaming accounts to place sports bets or play their favourite games while tired or intoxicated. In Ocean City, players can turn to the New Jersey Council on Problem Gambling for support and resources: 1-800-GAMBLER (1-800-426-2537), and in South Africa, players can turn to the South African Responsible Gambling Foundation (SARGF) for similar information and assistance at https://responsiblegambling.org.za/. Players are urged to call an experienced counsellor at any time they need on a toll-free landline number (0800 006 008) or by sending the WhatsApp/SMS message ‘Help’ to 076 675 0710. In other words, there is more support for anyone who is deemed ‘at-risk’ than ever. Professional support, guidance, and information is only ever a click or tap away. Players can also set themselves time-out and self-exclusion periods if they think that they are gambling too often. When they are self-excluded, they won’t be able to log into their accounts to deposit, gamble or withdraw until the time limit they originally set has ended. Final thoughts Thanks to the changing attitudes of regulators and operators towards protecting players, there has also been a cultural shift in the attitude towards sports betting and other legally permitted gambling attitudes, which is seen not only in Ocean City and South Africa but also in most other major global jurisdictions where it’s legal to place sports bets and play online casino games at fully licensed and regulated iGaming sites. Artificial intelligence is also now used by operators to monitor account activity in a non-intrusive way by gathering and analysing data about how players interact with their accounts. AI-powered tools, machine learning, and big data can detect subtle patterns in behaviour to raise the alarms should anyone be gambling more than they should be and get those players the help they need by providing the names and contact information for local problem gambling organisations. In other words, there has never been a safer time than now to gamble online, provided players are willing to help themselves and gamble as responsibly as they can. It’s much easier said than done, but also a lot easier to stay in control these days compared to just ten years ago, which is why online gambling is also now far more normalised than ever.