Browsing by Author "Lewis, Johanna"

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    How Big Is Canada’s Black Market for Sports Betting?
    (Cardus Work and Economics, 2024-09) Lewis, Johanna
    [A Cardus Research Brief] One of the arguments made when single-event sports betting was legalized in Canada in 2021 was that people were going to bet on sports anyway, so why not make it safer to do so, and taxable? There’s an element of truth to this. Regulation does allow for government oversight and improved play protections, and it’s better for gambling revenue to go to problem-gambling treatment and other government programs than to organized crime. Yet there are several problems with the argument. For one, it presents gambling demand as basically inelastic: people have a certain amount they want to bet on sports, and that’s the amount they’re going to bet, regardless of the legal conditions for doing so. But gambling corporations (including government-owned corporations such as OLG) clearly don’t believe demand for their product is inelastic, given that they spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year trying to stoke demand through advertising.
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    The Hidden Harms of Single-Event Sports Betting in Ontario
    (Cardus Work and Economics, 2024-09) Lewis, Johanna
    Sports betting is everywhere. Since single-event sports betting was legalized in Canada in 2021, sports games have become saturated by gambling messages. A recent study found that viewers were exposed to 2.8 references to sports betting every minute of the live sports broadcasts the researchers studied. On average, more than one fifth (21.6 percent) of viewing time included some form of gambling reference. Viewers are starting to get fed up. An Ipsos survey in January 2023 found that almost half (48 percent) of Canadians believe that the number of sports-betting ads is excessive. When asked whether there should be limits on the number and placement of ads, nearly two-thirds (63 percent) agreed.
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    Turning Aces into Assets: Four Options to Help the Government Turn its Addiction to Gambling Revenue into Assets for the Poor
    (Cardus, 2021-05) Lewis, Johanna; Dijkema, Brian
    Government-run gambling is ripe for reform. In our previous report, “Pressing Its Luck,” we examined the ways in which the state’s gambling monopoly operates as a tax on the marginalized - preying on the poor and those who are playing hard to join them. We concluded by offering four policy reforms that could help provinces kick their addiction to regressive gambling profits and build a system that works for, not against, low-income households. Here, we provide a more detailed framework for recovery by exploring each policy option in depth. Returning annual gambling profits to the poor through cash transfers is one option. A second is to promote asset building through a matched savings program. Governments can also work with financial institutions to offer prize-linked savings products, an innovative way to help families build emergency savings funds. Finally, given that gambling profits are drawn disproportionately from problem gamblers, we argue that governments should increase funding for problem-gambling research, prevention, and treatment out of provincial gambling corporations’ marketing budgets.