Interest in Sports and Sports Betting

Abstract

There has been a worldwide growth in sports betting activity, in part due to the widespread use of the Internet. The objective of this research is to make a joint analysis of the probabilities of offline and online sports gambling participation, focusing on their association with sport-related variables. To this aim, we estimate a bivariate probit model of online and offline sports betting using the 2022 Spanish Survey of Sporting Habits, a cross-sectional database representative of the Spanish population (sample size: 10,267 observations). In general, interest in sports and sports practice are correlated with sports betting. Moreover, people who play sports and, in particular, those who play football, have a higher probability of betting offline. In the case of online betting, all sport-related variables are statistically significant but sports participation. Another noteworthy result is the positive correlation in the random terms of the probabilities of offline and online sports betting.

Keywords

offline sports betting online sports betting interest in sports gambling

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