A book exposing how online gambling has transformed sport and a generation of fans has been shortlisted for a 2026 Irish Book Award.
Imitation Games: How Gambling Hijacked Sport, by University of Bath gambling expert Darragh McGee, is in the running for the Listeners’ Choice Award, with a public vote now open until 13 November.
Vote for Imitation Games in the Irish Book Awards
Published by Penguin imprint Bodley Head, the book draws on more than a decade of Darragh’s research into the rapid growth of online sports gambling and its impact on sport, fans and public health, particularly among younger people.
It charts how smartphones, social media, advertising and the rise of in-play betting have made gambling increasingly embedded in the experience of following sport, with bets now available around the clock on almost every aspect of a game.
Darragh McGee, a Senior Lecturer in the University’s Department for Health and member of the Centre for 21st Century Public Health, said:
“We’ve seen a revolution in sports gambling over the past two decades. The dawn of a digital age, from the advent of smartphones and social media to data harvesting and surveillance capitalism, has spawned entire new paradigms of gambling, including in-play sports betting, which carves up a single sporting event into hundreds of micro-events – all available at the click of a button, 24/7, on almost any sport.
“Despite evidence of the harms associated with gambling, the industry has also reinvented itself not just as a fun, leisure activity, but a normalised part of fan culture.”
Imitation Games examines how online gambling grew from a relatively small industry into a global business, and the human cost of that transformation. It also looks at how the relationship between gambling and sport could change in the future.
Darragh has spent a decade researching online sports gambling in the UK and Sub-Saharan Africa and its impact on public health. His research and writing have previously featured in the BBC, Guardian and Men’s Health.
The Listeners’ Choice Award is decided by the public, with voting open until 13 November.