With the tragic death of an English young man at the beginning of this year, over a loss on a gambling machine, the focus has been raised on responsible gambling all across Britain. The guy committed suicide over what would seem a silly loss of around GBP 500. For anyone who has had a closer experience with the issue though, it is clear that this, same as any other addiction, is a very serious issue not to be overlooked by both – bookmakers and players alike.
Just a week ago, one of the giants of the industry – Paddy Power – was held responsible for a problem gambler as it was accused for encouraging the man as he lost five jobs, his home and access to his children. The information became publically available after a report by the Gambling Commission, stating the company has failed in providing their customers with sufficient methods to fight addictions and has also not been clear on ensuring the machines have not been used to launder money and in other criminal activities. Paddy Power responded with donating £280,000 to a socially responsible cause. This didn’t seem enough though, with anti-gambling campaigners pointing to the fact that it would’ve taken the operator less than three hours to generate those funds, according to their recently published financial results. Based on the numbers submitted the firm is cashing in an average of £97,000 every hour.
The issue is rather serious and worth taking a closer look at. And not just at one side of the coin. After the tragic incident and the subsequent few scandals with gambling operators, the tabloids went crazy, practically staring a war on the betting industry altogether.
The Senet Group (the betting industry self-appointed governor, with members including Coral, Ladbrokes, Paddy Power and William Hill and Scotbet) was joined last week by Sky Betting. Sky is the only one of all members who conduct their business solely online and so is best placed to help the rest to take things positively forward.
The group of operators launched a response to the relentless campaign, targeted particularly at the Daily Mail, Times and the Mirror. As an example, the Times claimed the recently launched by the government campaign to fund medications for trouble gamblers is costing over £10k per patient to the National Health Service, making the average brit furious of course – is that why we are paying taxes? To fund gamblers? However, it appears that the medicines cost only £68 per patient over a 3-month course. The number of cases that were documented in the UK over the past year is only 5, meaning the budget spent on all barely went over £1000. A massive difference when you are trying to scare off the average tax payer that their money is being wasted by certain industry’s fault. The newspaper did eventually have to admit the facts but that of course wasn’t done on the front page (it went to p.28 to be exact).
The Association of British Bookmakers (ABB) also stood up for its members, writing that the tabloids have launched “little more than a litany of non-evidenced campaign assertions that lacked any proportionality or reference to evidential sources such as gambling prevalence and health surveys”. They mentioned official UK gambling studies, showing problem gambling levels remained below 1% (and in fact much to everyone’s surprise dropped!) from 0.6% to 0.5% in the period between 1999 and 2012. The number of betting shops has also drastically decreased by over 300 in the past 3 years. The ABB nicely wrapped it up with “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.” Of course, both the Senet Group and the ABB are by far biased. Still, I would advise you, as with anything else, to keep your eyes open and stick to facts.