Over the past forty years, Western governments have increasingly liberalized and deregulated gambling, which is now used to deliver state revenues and commercial profit in many jurisdictions. Gambling for Profit is a cross-national history of the emergence of legal gambling, including lotteries, gaming machines, and casinos.

Gambling for Profit is unique among studies of gambling's twentieth-century growth thanks to Kerry G.E. Chambers's strong analytical framework — investigating not only the political aspects of legalization, but also the sociocultural factors that influence popular adoption. Chambers provides a useful chronological examination of the electronic gambling phenomenon, as well as comparative data on dates of introduction and revenues across twenty-three countries. Gambling for Profit provides a dynamic model to explore the legalization of gambling and stresses the inadequacy of seeking universal explanations for gambling's entrenchment within particular cultures.

Kerry G.E. Chambers lectures in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Dalhousie University.

Kerry G.E. Chambers' profile page

‘Gambling for Profit covers a lot of territory and gambling researchers will appreciate the breadth of sources comprising the cross-national analysis. The book is a valuable addition to the field of gambling studies.’

Canadian Journal of Sociology, vol 37:01:2012