The Australian Wagering Council is celebrating the release of a new gambling study that pokes holes in the theory that there’s been an ‘explosion’ in sports betting and problem gambling behavior related to betting.

This week saw the release of the Study of Gambling and Health in Victoria, a government-funded survey conducted by Schottler Consulting. The 300-page study, the first to examine gambling behavior in the state since 2008, involved a telephone survey of 13,584 Victorian adults, including mobile-only households for the first time.

The study found that overall gambling participation rate in 2014 had fallen nearly five points – from 21.5% to 16.7% – since 2008. The rate of problem gambling among the surveyed participants was unchanged at 0.81%. This latter number was lower in landline-only adults ((0.72%) than in mobile-only respondents (1.07%).

The most notable decline in gambling participation was at the state’s ubiquitous video poker (pokies) machines, with 15.2% of Victorian adults playing at least once in 2014, down from 21.5% in 2008 and 33.5% in 2003. The study notes that this decline supports the theory that gamblers “adapt to the novelty of gaming opportunities over time.”