So how do other countries fare in comparison? In the UK, sports betting in general and lotteries are immensely popular. As an interesting tidbit, the UK didn’t make gambling legal until 1960.Īs we said, the minimum UK gambling age is 18, which means you must be legally an adult to visit a a local casino or to to bet on horse races. Another product of this law is that it set the legal age to gamble in the UK is 18.īy comparing Britain’s legal gambling to those of their European neighbours and those across the pond, we can learn a lot about the UK’s cultural perspective towards betting and how this could potentially sway the minds of children to gamble as they get older. This was a major step in ensuring player protections against preying, manipulative online operators and casinos. In 2005, the UK Gambling Commission conjured up the Gambling Act, in a step to regulate all betting activities throughout the land. If these behaviours are harmful even to them, why isn’t the legal lottery age set to 18? Does the state consider gambling to be as heavy a topic as substance abuse issues? Still, the question exists, why is that some types of gambling are considered fine for teenagers whilst others are forbidden? Why is it that one form of gambling is seen as more harmful than others?įour years after the UK’s National Lottery began in 1994, Oflot, the country’s lottery regulator found that 5% of under 16s had a gambling problem whilst 2% were addicted to scratchcards. Therefore, the UK Gambling Commission decided to set specific rules to protect British youths from becoming problematic gamblers.

In fact, research into the topic would suggest that underage gamblers are more at risk and between two and four times more likely to develop a gambling addiction than an adult just starting out is. This topic has been one of the many focuses of online casino research for some time. With such an abundance of betting adverts bombarding us daily, does this mean children are more likely to be influenced by these adverts? The British attitude towards gambling is pretty mainstream in comparison to other European nations, with online casinos and betting operators advertising their services to exhaustion across the TV, sports games, newspapers, and social media. Published on: 7 September 2021 Why Do These Age Limits Exist Anyway?

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