The Gambling Industry and Their Strategies

Part 1: The Psychology Playbook

Gambling is often sold as harmless fun. A casual bet on the weekend game, a jam on the pokies, or even a quick spin on your phone at halftime. But behind the lights and the ads sits a harsher truth: these products are designed to exploit how our brains work.

At the heart of it is a compulsion loop – anticipation, action, and an unpredictable reward that lights up the brain with dopamine. Dopamine is the same chemical that makes us feel good when we eat chocolate, scroll social media, or get likes online. Gambling taps into that same wiring. Behaviour specialist, facilitator and coach Genezy ’Ilolahia, a proud grandson of Tongan migrants to Central Auckland with a background in psychology, has spent over a decade helping people understand the science of behaviour. As he explains:

These products are designed to exploit how our brains work.

“When you pull the lever on a pokie machine and wait to see if you get lucky, it’s the same science that’s built into phones. You pull your feed down, you scroll, you wait for something. That anticipation alone is enough to get the system firing.”

It isn’t just the win that hooks people. It’s the build-up. Even the almost-wins. Research shows that near-misses light up the same parts of the brain as actual wins [2]. As Ilolahia puts it:

“The reason near-misses work is because dopamine still gets released, even when you don’t win. The anticipation of winning releases smaller amounts of dopamine too. Over time, the machine or betting app gaslights people into thinking they’re going to win – that’s the brain-level science at play.”

Psychologists call this variable-ratio reinforcement – rewards that arrive unpredictably rather than on a set schedule. That unpredictability is powerful. Ilolahia says:

“With gambling, you don’t win every time – it’s unpredictable. That unpredictability encourages people to keep going. People think persistence pays off – ‘See, I kept going and I hit’ – but that’s the illusion of control.”

Over time, the machine or betting app gaslights people into thinking they’re going to win – that’s the brain-level science at play.

On top of that, there’s the way gambling captures attention. Anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll describes a trance-like state some players enter as the zone, where time, money, and even basic needs fall away [3]. Modern machines and apps are designed to keep people in that state for as long as possible. Notifications, sounds, lights, and speed all push you back into the loop.

And then there’s belonging. Ilolahia said humans have a core, fundamental need for belonging.

“We’re social beings. We need each other, and because of that we end up playing social games – we conform, we adjust our behaviour to stay liked within a group.”

That’s why fantasy leagues feel so sticky. On the surface, they look harmless – sometimes the money starts small, or not at all. But what keeps people engaged isn’t just the points, it’s the banter with mates, the competition, the pressure to keep up. Add in live betting and constant phone access, and suddenly the social pull is part of the trap.

Put together, it’s a system that trains your brain to stay in the cycle even when you’re losing. The jolts of anticipation, the near-misses, the unpredictable rewards, the zone, the social pull – none of it is accidental.

This isn’t weakness. It isn’t about willpower. It’s how the game is built.

And the game is rigged. Don’t get played.

Part 2: The Marketing Machine

Read part two in this four part series here.