Day 308 - Quitting Gambling
How gambling marketing has changed, targeting children and the vulnerable
Day 308 - How gambling marketing has changed, targeting children and the vulnerable
If there was one thing that really hooked me into the gambling mindset early on as a kid, it was the poker ads being shown on Sports TV Channels back in the early 2000s when the poker boom was first getting started. The ads at the time were very clearly targeting the young adult male, who had disposable income. The ads painted a picture of a “lifestyle”, where being a pro poker player seemed like the coolest thing in the world. Everyone wore suits, had slicked back hair, had money clips full of cash. The early ads had a simple message: these poker players are cool, skilled, and successful and you could be too, all you had to do was start playing. They sold the idea that poker was mostly a game of skill, and that it was easy. They sold the idea that you, the viewer, was already good enough to compete with the pros, to be at the same table. To a young impressionable teen, it was very easy to fall into the trap. The product was the lifestyle of a pro poker player, and I bought it up.
I fully believe that the messaging in these ads were one of the main reasons why Poker got slapped hard by the Feds in the US at the time. The ads were trying to sell the idea that anyone could turn 10 dollars into 10000, that anyone could be sitting at final tables with the pros, all you had to do was play. Of course, this was a flat out lie. While poker is in many ways a game of skill, what these ads failed to convey is that gambling with your real money is a whole different world. The ads hooked you in by selling a lifestyle, that just could not be provided at all. In many ways, these early ads were completely false advertising. I may be misremembering, but one of the main Full Tilt poker marketing strategies was that you could play at the same table with pros, that these pros were using their own money, that they had turned 10 dollars into 10000. This turned out to all be lies, the pros were not using their own money, and these campaigns were completely fabricated.. So in the end, the ads were false advertisement and the Feds clamped down hard on them.
My main point though here, isn’t that the ads were false, but that they were targeting the young adult male who had money. Poker was being marketed as the cool new thing, and it was a very successful campaign. The thing that hurt poker was when it all started to seem bullshit… In many ways having an average Joe win the Word Series of Poker seemed like a great thing for the poker industry. Yet, in my opinion it actually killed it, since the façade of cool skilled pros started to fade away. Now it was just some fat idiot who got lucky. That really cooled me on poker, problem was that I was already in too deep.
So poker in America and around the world suffered a huge downturn, with sites being banned in the US, and the marketing campaigns fading into the distance. Poker died… and for years there was a huge effort to bring it back somehow.. but it never worked. Then, Draftkings and Fanduel realized something: nothing is more sacred then Football in America. They could ban every gambling site, they could ban every poker site… but DON’T TOUCH OUR SACRED GOD GIVEN RIGHT TO GAMBLE ON FOOTBALL! So somehow Draftkings and Fanduel managed to skirt the laws, implant themselves, and ultimately led to America coming back to gambling.
During this, the marketing around gambling changed completely… they were no longer trying to sell the lifestyle of a successful gambler. It wasn’t about fancy suits, fast cars, fancy parlor rooms, and beautiful women. It was about FUN, about having a good time with friends.
At the same time as this was happening, mobile gaming was becoming huge, and in many ways most of these mobile games were just another form of slot machines, pay to play, pay to win. So, the gambling industry saw this and realized, while the game companies copied them in terms of game development and business model (making all your money off of whales, or addicts) the gambling industry copied their marketing strategy.
I was watching the NBA last night, and I would say at every ad break I would see 2-3 ads for gambling websites. 50% of all ads were gambling. What they were selling.. was a good time, was entertainment, was “fun” games. They may as well of been advertising the hottest mobile game, the messaging was the same. Instead of advertising winning money, it was about having “fun”. It was just simple entertainment. Nothing about money, nothing about winning a new cool lifestyle, nothing about women and sex. Sex doesn’t sell anymore, what sells is the idea that with a few taps on your phone you could be having FUN!
Who does this target? Well, in my opinion this targets two groups specifically
Children. In my opinion these ads are purposely targeted towards children, because they know they can get away with it. They show the slots spinning, they show rollercoasters and fun things. They try to sell the idea that the gambling site is akin to a carnival or festival of fun. It is just one big fun circus. If I were a parent, I wouldn’t allow my child to watch sports until they were 18… because these ads are specifically targeted towards hooking the child, towards normalizing the idea that everyone gambles, because it is fun.
Problem gamblers. Why worry about getting new customers when you can just target the addicts that are already paying you thousands of dollars? The way these ads target problem gamblers is through normalizing gambling. They try to sell the idea that it is just fun, just entertainment. This speaks directly to the problem gambler, because as an addict I always wanted to hold onto the idea that it was just fun, just normal entertainment. Most people spent their money at restaurants, I spent it it at the online casino, both harmless and fun…
If these ads were still trying to sell the idea of having a cool lifestyle because of gambling, winning money with gambling… I would of been able to realize it was all bullshit. Yet, because they just sold themselves as “fun games” it always reinforced the idea that I didn’t have a problem, I wasn’t addicted to this self destructive behavior. One of the ads I see a lot in Canada has a line “Games made specifically for you!”… For WHO?? Because these games are meant to addict, meant to hook, meant to make me lose my money… So who are these games made for? They are made for those who are already addicted. The ads are made for those who are already addicted.
If the ads were actually to try and get new players, they wouldn’t need to blast them to us every ad break. Car ads are not for new prospective buyers, they are for the people who already have a car but need to have the newest and greatest. They are for kids to build up brand loyalty and normalize the idea that buying brand new cars is just what you do in life. In the same way, gambling ads are not for new prospective players like they used to be, they are for children to normalize gambling, and for addicts that need to keep playing to have “fun”.
Gambling used to be about the smoky backroom with old guys in fancy suits flashing their money clips. Now it is about having fun playing games, games just like you already play on your mobile phone. Which one is more dangerous? Probably the one trying to market to children and addicts, the one we have today.