All in: a scoping review of the association between gambling and athletic participation

The barriers between sport and gambling recently have eroded in the US. While this presents economic opportunities, it may also increase the risk of gambling problems among athletes, particularly if athletes are already more susceptible to gambling problems than others. We conducted a scoping review of the literature that sought to characterize what is known about the relationship between participation in athletics and gambling. We identified 45 studies that met our inclusion criteria. The majority (56%) sampled athletes at the collegiate level. More than half of the studies did not include a non-athlete control group. Among the studies that did compare athletes to non-athletes, findings were mixed. Half of the studies that examined gambling involvement found that athletes had higher involvement than non-athletes, while half found no relationship. About 23% of studies that examined gambling problems found a positive relationship between being an athlete and experiencing gambling problems; 69% found no relationship, and 8% found a negative relationship. In some cases, gender appeared to moderate these relationships; in others, there was no interaction with gender. Future research should include rigorous studies that examine these relationships at diverse levels of play, include non-athlete controls, and test what mechanisms explain these relationships.