Foundations and youth organisations have urged the government to regulate online gambling more strictly, following recent studies which have pointed to a surge of teenagers participating in league and World Cup football betting.
Rungarun Limlahaphan, director of social and health risk control at the Thai Health Promotion Foundation, said Monday that the foundation has joined hands with the Stop Gambling Foundation and Unicef Thailand to compile data regarding gambling among teenagers.
She said one of the main problems youth face when they go online is exposure to online gambling advertisements, citing a study the foundation conducted during the recent World Cup on over 2,500 Thai teens. According to the study, 22% of the sample said they see football betting ads every time they surf the web.
Some 18% of the teens had actually clicked on the ads, with over half then actually betting out of curiosity after clicking through to the site.
"While the effects of online gambling are severe, actual cases are difficult to compile, since each case directly affects the individual families of those involved," Ms Rungarun said.
"Present gambling-related laws in Thailand are extremely outdated, and do not include any formal penalties for betting online."
The only legal forms of gambling in Thailand are betting on horse races and buying tickets for the government-sponsored lottery. However, illegally established casinos and other local forms of gambling, such as cockfighting, are prevalent in the country.
One of the more recent additions is online gambling, most commonly associated with betting on football matches. Prohibition of gambling dates back to the Gambling Act, which was introduced in 1935 and has remained unamended since.
"Seeing parents buy lottery tickets or have a look at the lottery results in front of their children is commonplace in Thailand, so betting has never been seen as such a large issue in Thai culture," said Thanakorn Komkris, director of the Stop Gambling Foundation.
"Online gambling, however, is nothing like the gambling of our generation, as it is so much easier for young children to access.
"The threats which come with these services, which use flashy ads and attractive presenters to draw in more users, must be regulated by a government body," he added.
According to a recent survey in Thailand conducted by U-Report, a service geared towards promoting young voices sponsored by Unicef, over half of 2,280 teens surveyed said they are willing to use their own money to bet online. Around 34% specified their first bet would likely be a maximum of 500 baht.
Another U-Report survey with around 9,700 participants stated 80% agreed to the showing of anti-betting messages before broadcasts of football matches.
Patcharapan Prajuablap, secretary-general of the Thailand Youth Institute, said online betting sites are making use of widely used social media platforms such as Facebook and Line for promotion.
Mr Patcharapan, 22, said several sports betting ads can be seen on sports news sites, which are normally frequented by those in his age group.
"It takes an average of 45 days for authorities to close down an illegal betting website, but a new site can be created almost immediately," he said.
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