Part 2: The Marketing Machine
If the psychology explains how gambling hooks our brains, the marketing shows why so many of us end up in front of a machine or app in the first place. Long before anyone places a bet, we’ve already been primed by years of ads, broadcasts, and storylines that make gambling look not only normal, but smart, fun, even aspirational.
Sports broadcasts in Aotearoa and Australia are littered with betting ads. Odds are read out as casually as team lists, with entire pre-game segments devoted to “who’s paying what.” That bombardment has helped normalise sports betting as if it’s just part of the culture. A safer, even smarter, way to gamble.
Lotto takes a different tack. Its ads sell humour, joy, and fantasy. Winning isn’t shown as rare – it’s painted as an everyday possibility. People in commercials splash out on cars, boats, big celebrations. The tone is deliberately light-hearted. The message: a ticket is just harmless fun, a moment of joy, a chance to dream.
The gambling industry doesn’t even need to advertise directly anymore – we’re doing it for them.
Together, those ads have done more than sell products – they’ve shaped culture and our perception. And now, betting content is spilling into the spaces where we hang out. Podcasts that sound like the boys’ chat, TikToks packed with betting lingo, influencers hyping up their multis like it’s just a part of everyday life. The gambling industry doesn’t even need to advertise directly anymore – we’re doing it for them.
Online platforms go further. They don’t just wait for you to log in. They track your behaviour, then send personalised nudges at exactly the right moment. A notification when your balance is low. A “special offer” when you haven’t played for a while. A bonus if you top up now. All engineered to keep you coming back.
And it doesn’t stop with adults. The mechanics of gambling are creeping into video games through loot boxes – randomised in-game rewards that mimic the feeling of pokies. Experts warn that these are grooming young people into the same reward loops that drive gambling. One article explored how seemingly harmless video game transactions led one young person to engage in more problematic gambling behaviour racking up thousands of dollars in debt. [1]
The design is consistent across every channel: gambling is framed as entertainment, belonging, even success. It shows up in the places we relax – sport, TV, gaming – and slips into everyday routines long before most people understand the risks.
All engineered to keep you coming back.
And the numbers show it’s working. Around one in six men in Aotearoa placed a sports bet in the past year. Māori men are even more likely to gamble weekly – about 16.2%, higher than the national average. Nearly 40% of men have gambled online in some form. These aren’t just numbers – they reflect the quiet ways gambling has become part of daily life, hitting our communities harder than most. [2]
Which raises bigger questions. If gambling addiction is deliberately engineered, how much responsibility really rests with individuals? Should products designed to exploit brain chemistry and psychology be regulated as tightly as alcohol or tobacco? And if gambling uses these tactics so effectively, how many other industries – from gaming, to finance apps, even politics – are doing the same?
The truth is, gambling companies know exactly what they’re doing. They’ve mastered the playbook: build the compulsion, exploit the bias, normalise the behaviour, then profit from the harm.
Their house always wins. Never yours.
But there’s another side to the story. For whānau who want to pause, reflect, or change their habits, there are kaupapa-led tools like Pātea – a free Māori-designed app that creates space to do that without shame or pressure.
Because your time, your money, and your hauora are worth more than their game.
Their house always wins. Never yours.
References
- Dangerous play: How online gaming purchases led an Australian youth into a secret gambling addiction. (2024, August 31). the Guardian. Link
- NZ Gambling Survey 2023/24 – Kupe
