Bet Regret is the campaign aiming at raising awareness and reducing ill-placed bets introduced by the gambling harm prevention charity, GambleAware. Launched in 2019, the campaign’s target audience is approximately 2.4 million young adults who frequently place bets online.

Bet Regret Asks Gamblers to Pause before Placing a Bet

The gambling harm prevention charity, GambleAware released an update outlining the process of its Bet Regret campaign. According to the gambling harm prevention charity, the campaign “describes the universal feeling of remorse sports bettors often get when they make an impulsive bet“. The campaign calls for change in each gambler’s behavior, encouraging people to “pause” before placing any bets that they may regret at a later point.

The first phase of GambleAware’s campaign ran in 2019. After that, in September and October 2020, the second phase was launched. As a part of the second phase, special behavioral techniques were introduced which aimed at encouraging gamblers to pause before placing a bet which they may regret.

As a part of the strategy to encourage bettors to pause, the campaign calls for “Tap Out” – a method used in martial arts when a player needs to tap the floor to acknowledge that he was defeated by his opponent.

Two short movies that present bettors who placed ill-considered bets are a part of the campaign. Those gamblers are interrupted by a wrestler, who “pins them down until they agree to ‘tap out’ of their betting apps” and saves them from regretting that they placed a bet.

The campaign’s target audience is approximately 2.4 million young adults, age 18-34 who are frequent gamblers and mainly place bets online. Created with the help of academic experts and after an extensive outreach, the campaign helps to raise awareness and urges people who observe signs of gambling harm to help. As a part of phase two, the campaign will run across TV, radio, and digital platforms this month.