Share 
Having religious beliefs does not discourage someone from betting on sports, according to a recent Ohio State University study.
Ohio State study methodology and results
The study was conducted online between the fall of 2018 and spring of 2019, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court‘s decision in Murphy v. NCAA effectively overturned a federal ban on sports betting.
Researchers surveyed 3,701 adults between the ages of 21 and 65, revealing a positive correlation between religious affiliation and sports gambling activity. Researchers had expected to see the opposite.
“This result complicates the assertion that any exposure to religion is necessarily protective against morally risky or deviant behavior,” the researchers wrote.
Sports betting statistics by religious group
The study showed that Catholics — specifically Catholic men — were the group most likely to place wagers on sports. Among respondents, 17% said they had bet on sports in the previous year, with an average investment of $57.
Chris Knoester, a co-author of the study and a sociology professor at Ohio State, highlighted that figure as evidence of how the average person participates in gambling:
“The average person is not gambling thousands of dollars,” Knoester said. “The average hardcore gambler very well may be, but the average U.S. adult is not.
The study suggests that sports gambling is not overwhelmingly common, nor do most people allocate a great deal of money to sports gambling. In fact, people actually reported winning money from doing so, on average – although we are suspicious of that having actually been the case.”
Why religion isn’t a gambling deterrent
According to news by Spectrum News 1, the study was designed to test the propensity for sports betting among religious individuals. Co-author Laura Upenieks, an associate professor of sociology at Baylor University, said religion does not serve as a universal deterrent for sports gambling.
“There has been this longstanding assumption that religion discourages gambling. And we wanted to test that core assumption,” Upenieks said.
“One of the things you’ll find in our results is that different religious traditions treat gambling very differently, and that religion doesn’t uniformly suppress sports gambling in the United States.”
