The availability of offline gambling premises in Catalonia and its relationship with socioeconomic determinants

Background: The prevalence of gambling is increasing every year, with offline gambling the most prevalent within the Catalan population. The availability of gambling premises can normalize gambling and influence the population´s attitude towards it, making it more . The aim of this study is to describe the availability of offline gambling in Catalonia, and to evaluate the contextual variables influencing its distribution.

Methods: We have undertaken an ecological study using all the municipalities of Catalonia (N:947) as the study population. Dependent variables are the number of offline gambling-related premises in a municipality: bars and restaurants with slot machines, betting shops, and lottery retailers. Independent variables are the number of inhabitants, socioeconomic level, and the number of hotel beds for each municipality. We analysed the distribution of the dependent variables representing them geographically. To assess the association between the dependent and independents we calculated Spearman correlations and we have elaborated multivariate linear regression models with robust variance.

Results: A total of 22,039 gambling-related premises are found across all the municipalities: 16,858 premises with slot machines; 188 betting shops and 4,993 lottery retailers. The geographic distribution of the premises in Catalonia shows different patterns between the dependent variables. Premises with slot machine are only related with socioeconomic level, while the lottery retailers are mainly related with tourism.

Conclusion: Distribution of the gambling premises is biased towards municipalities with a lower socioeconomic level, increasing the vulnerability of people in these regions to gambling-related harm. This study will be crucial to analyse if the differences in the availability of gambling influence the level of gambling related harms in the population.