The UK Government’s triennial review of the nation’s gambling industry is due to be published late next month, or precisely a year after it became known that measures to curb the highly controversial B2 gaming machines would finally be considered and would likely be introduced.
The so-called fixed-odds betting terminals have over the years became the main source of gross gambling yield for British bookmakers with retail presence across the nation. Since introduced across betting shops in the early 2000s, the machines have grown in popularity and number. With that, they have gained staunch opposition from powerful politicians and anti-gambling groups.
The machines have been widely blamed for the widespread increase in problem gambling rates in the nation, and for ruining families, careers, and, generally, the lives of those affected by FOBT addiction as well as of their nearest and dearest.
The gambling devices allow players to wager up to £100 every 20 seconds. In other words, players can lose £300 within a minute. The high-speed, high-stakes machines have generated more than £11 billion in gross gambling yield since 2008, when the UK Gambling Commission published its first comprehensive financial report.
Where Are FOBTs Located and Why Is This a Problem?
The fact that FOBTs provide customers with dynamic, high-speed action has won them quite a lot of enemies. Evidence that the devices can trigger addiction has been piling over the years and despite bookmakers’ attempts to present a softer picture of the issue, a problem does exist and it is a big one.
A 2014 report compiled by research firm Geofutures on behalf of the Responsible Gambling Trust showed that there has been higher concentration of betting shops in UK’s most deprived areas. Under UK gambling law, each betting shop can feature no more than four FOBTs. In other words, people from the nation’s areas of high welfare dependency are daily exposed to the negative influence of the controversial machines.
According to the Geofutures report, there have been two times more betting shops in areas of deprivation and that levels of violence by customers of said shops were higher in those areas. There have been multiple occurrences of gambling customers with problem gambling behavior engaging in different, oftentimes illegal and dangerous, activities in order to find finances to fuel their addiction.
A recent map presented by The People also provides information about the number of betting shops in poor areas and the amounts lost in those same areas when compared to areas around the UK where residents boast higher income.
The Liverpool Riverside features 53 betting shops and players have been recorded to have lost £8.1 million from FOBTs located in the area. Slough, a town located 20 miles from Central London, has 30 betting shops and its players have lost £5.7 million. In comparison, York Outer has just 2 betting shops, on which players have lost just £317,000. Here it is interesting to note that property prices (an indication about an area’s welfare) in York have soared to an average of a quarter of a million pounds over the past several years and that there has been huge demand for such properties.
The People’s map shows that Henley-on-Thames has no betting shops and no FOBTs, respectively. On the other hand, the town’s real estate market has been thriving with the average property price soaring to seven-figure amounts.
The UK Gambling Commission, the body tasked with the regulation of the controversial machines, has recently posted research on the behavior of UK’s gambling customers. According to the Commission’s findings, unemployed adults are more likely to gamble on the controversial machines than representatives of other groups of UK’s population.
Bookmakers’ Response
Responding to the 2014 Geofutures report, bookmakers argued back then that betting shops are mostly concentrated in affluent areas and that the money generated from FOBTs located in poorer parts of the UK represented only a fifth of the amounts generated from areas with well-to-do residents.
In a more recent attempt to defend his company and other industry stakeholders, Ladbrokes Coral CEO Jim Mullen pointed out that the Government should be very careful when and if it decides to introduce any curbs on FOBTs as this would have quite negative consequences for the industry and those employed by it. The executive argued that the proposed reduction in the maximum stakes from £100 to just £2 could result in massive lay-offs. Other industry stakeholders have also pointed to the fact that tax money would also diminish as a result from the discussed limitations on the controversial machines.
However, many would claim, and rightfully so, that it is namely tax money that are daily spent on FOBTs and that the machines are actually robbing the Treasury and its contributors rather then filling it with much-needed proceeds.
The UK Government’s review is expected to be published in late October and reports that the maximum stake allowed on FOBTs could be reduced to £20 have prevailed media coverage from the past several weeks.
