The Health Survey for England, 2018, reports that more than half the population (53%) gambled last year, even if that was just buying a lottery ticket or scratch card. There’s a call for gambling companies to “take their responsibilities seriously”, but I’m not convinced that these companies - now mostly operating online - see themselves having any “responsibilities” at all… beyond making as much money as possible, as quickly as possible, from as many people as possible.
When betting shops continued to open, mostly in the poorer parts of town, it wasn’t because greater numbers of punters were betting on football matches and horse racing. It was because each betting shop was allowed to have a maximum of four fixed odds betting terminals, known in the trade as the “crack cocaine of gambling”. The maximum bet for any gambler on an FOBT has now been reduced, by law, to £2, with the result that many betting shops are disappearing from the high street. This does not, of course, suggest that these businesses have suddenly become “responsibile, but merely that more and more gambling activities are going online. Punters now monitor their bets on their phones, instead of standing around in a bookmakers with a fistful of betting slips.
Football fans watching matches on TV are now assailed by advertising - before, during and after the game - almost all of it from online betting companies. The pitch is relentless, with punters being encouraged to think that a big win requires little more than pressing the ‘Cash Out’ button on their gambling app. Gambling can now be even more private, and there is really no limit to how much money a gambling addict can ‘donate’ to these companies (many of them sited offshore, to minimise their tax liabilities). If we wait for these businesses to become “responsible”, we’ll be waiting for ever.
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