‘Betting with mates’: Gambling apps, masculinities and the financialisation of everyday life

The emergence of new digital technologies makes gambling more accessible than ever before. Whilst problem gambling is known to be a gendered issue predominantly impacting men, how young men use and understand gambling apps is not well understood. Most gambling research is conducted from a psychological perspective that does not account for gambling as a social practice, or the digital aspects as part of broader processes of financialisation and ‘everyday’ forms of indebtedness. Drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews with young men in the Hunter region of Australia, we explore the role of ‘bet with mates’ features on gambling apps in the social lives of young men, especially in relation to their participation in sport. In this article we seek to break with approaches that have focused primarily on problem gambling to instead consider the role of gambling in young men’s everyday lives and socialities, which are described by participants as offering opportunities for banter, connection, and friendship. The affordances of digital technologies extend the capacity for gambling and betting beyond traditional spaces such as the betting parlour, racetrack or casino into more intimate spaces through the continuous and ever-present smartphone. We pay attention to how gambling apps are used as part of mundane social and digital practices for young men during the course of their everyday lives – both alone and with friends. We show how betting apps are entangled with the particular socialities of young men’s lives, embedded in hetero-masculine norms associated with sporting and drinking cultures in Australia.