2023-12-27 12:00:07
Researcher associated with the study group of methods of sociological analysis at the Sorbonne, Thomas Amadieu is the author of The making of gambling addiction (Le Bord de l’eau, 2021). It details how gambling has become, in just a few decades, a public health issue.
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When did gambling appear, and why?
Gambling, in its current institutional form, straddles a commercial practice and a tax – therefore a practice supervised by the State. It is a form that dates back to the national lottery, implemented under François I.
Numerous lotteries have emerged to finance construction and renovations, such as those of the Military School or the Saint-Sulpice church in Paris. The “broken mouths” lottery, the ancestor of the Française des jeux (FDJ), was created after the First World War, always with the idea of raising a painless tax, while removing moral apprehensions by reducing money towards good works, such as helping those disabled by war.
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In a century, gambling has changed a lot.
Gambling has long been banned, and in theory it still is. But the exceptions are as numerous as the offer is plethoric. The growth of the market was driven by supply, with the appearance of new authorized and legalized games: the PMU then the additional lottery drawings in the 1980s. The appearance of slot machines in casinos democratized the convenient and accelerated the consumption of gambling. We then have a new acceleration with the arrival of online games in 2010.
This market is a bit strange, with the survival of monopolies, like that of the FDJ on lotteries, all overseen by the National Gaming Authority (ANJ).
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What is the profile of people who indulge in gambling?
The gaming audiences are as diverse as the games: typically, sports betting attracts a younger, heavily male demographic; with scratch games, we have a slight over-representation of women; Lottery games attract a much larger audience, better distributed throughout society.
Generally speaking, the more you come from a working class background, the more you will spend a significant part of your income on gambling. Gambling among the wealthiest also exists, through forms of conspicuous consumption, in casinos.
What characterizes gambling as a social phenomenon is really its massification, its democratization, including, unfortunately, among the youngest. The marketing strategy of online game operators is extremely well put together, playing on social advancement through gaming. These messages target adolescents, particularly those from working-class neighborhoods. We are seeing an explosion in gaming among the youngest.
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