...Vienna-based Bwin Interactive, is expected to report that problem gambling on the Internet is nearly non-existent.
The complete results of the study, which took place between February and October 2005 and polled 40,499 players on the Bwin Internet gaming sites, are expected in the coming weeks.
 
During a gaming conference in Montreal this week, CHA's director Richard A LaBrie described the survey as the “first public study of actual e-gaming behavior.” A smaller study, of 11,000 respondents, was undertaken last year by the University of Nottingham Trent for eCOGRA, the independent regulatory authority for the gaming industry. CMA undertakes studies of the public health regularly, and is quite famous in academic and medical circles for the accuracy, and relevance, of its reportage.

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LaBrie told the conference that the forthcoming study demonstrated that the "median" behavior of bettors amounted to spend of Euro 4 per day, or approximately $4. According to CHA's groundbreaking research only 1 percent of the 40,499 respondents "exhibited behavior" which could be read as problem gambling or “discontinuously high”.
 
Euro 61.6 million was wagered during the time of study, and 7.8 million bets were placed, said LaBrie. For the 39,719 players classified as "median" bettors, total average wagers for the duration of the study was Euro 148, or, approximately $148.
 
Speaking to the 1 percent of the sample who might be regarded as potentially problem gamblers, LaBrie revealed that even these are only spending the equivalent of “maybe a good bottle of wine a day”, on Internet gambling, which, depending upon's one's taste, can ran from $150 upwards. 
 
The study's methodology was as follows: all of the study’s participants were from the Bwin gaming sites, and the survey covered both account fixed-odds and live action betting, according to LaBrie.
 
The results of the survey will likely come as a shock to the conservative Republicans who passed last year's Internet gaming ban in the U.S., on hyped up charges that online gambling was draining family finances and leading to mass moral problems, experts noted.

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