I’d agree with this football has a truly unhealthy relationship with betting. You have adverts before games, after games, on the shirts, advertising boards. Not good for the many football fans that are gambling addicts.
Of course the clubs only care about the blood money they are getting tho.
Strong opposition is expected from clubs, who are raking in record amounts from sponsors`
It’s a match made in heaven. There’s a huge synergy between the two and it’s evident in the number of EPL teams that have gambling sponsors.
Sports betting was recently legalised in the US, so it’s a hugely growing market now.
The irony here is football itself is addicted to the money from the gambling industry.
It’s the most accessible drug out there. The easiest one to participate in with no barriers or taboos.
Know plenty of lads with bad debts because of this.
All these companies sickens me. They’re fking everywhere! I’m sure the clubs are worried. Bu hu. Less blood money means less money available for transfers. But in the end this leads to prices dropping and average players Maguire won’t go for fantasy sums. All and all a blessing in disguise.
Gambling booths in stadiums need to go too, anything that kids are going to see. Football adverts in the windows of betting shops, ads on websites the whole lot.
One of the whole points of the Gambling Act 2005 is to protect children and vulnerable people from the effects of problem gambling and companies try to circumvent that. When I worked in gambling it was company policy to try to upsell as many casual football punters as possible onto the addictive machines (not fruit machines, fixed odds betting terminals are far more dangerous and insidious than that even with the recent higher stakes ban). Targeting young customers (18 years old and early twenties) was encouraged.
No matter what warnings are put into adverts, bookies won’t be blind to the fact that their adverts appeal to people too young to gamble and whether they admit it not making gambling alluring to them is an objective of their marketing.
It’s an absolute cancer in society. Legal gambling has to exist to prevent organised crime stepping into the breach but it needs to be heavily, heavily restricted.
Something like this is long overdue. Probably be the guts of a decade unwinding all the links.
Depends on the state where you live.
Indeed, it’s a growing market ultimately. It’s just a strange industry for me which has a shockingly low level of control.
The fact it’s allowed for people to bet on leverage (money you do not have) is no wonder to how it damages people. A ban is the only way to kick it out of football.
At least here in the states, you can only bet with money that is in the account. For betting with money you don’t have, that would involve a bookie and bad times lay ahead if you’re doing that.
I do some daily fantasy sports stuff. It’s enjoyable, but ultimately entertainment for me. I’ve won enough to come out ahead (slightly) this season of doing NFL stuff mostly.
A friend did comment to me that it was different seeing an EPL game in person and seeing the live betting, half time odds, etc as there isn’t betting at sports stadiums in the U.S. There has been this “arms length” deal with sports betting for pro sports here. This is changing somewhat with the NBA having a stake in one of the DFS sites.
Gambling is too strongly engrained into culture.
You can remove all references, images, betting booths and adverts from TV broadcasts and stadiums but it’ll still be rampant in football.
Imo those times do not lay far ahead. GVC (who own many of the major bookies here in the UK) termed with MGM a couple years ago when the ruling was passed. I’m not against you playing entertaining bets at all, even I did it back in the day for fun with the odd quid I had. It’s just an industry which cries for control. That is all.
@sevchenko sorry I articulated that badly. I agree with you. It’s no solution to gambling as a culture, I meant with regards to gambling firms feeding their big bucks into club teams to subsidise their business a ban would be the only way forward.
I’ve considered how useful it would be to enforce further regulation on betting companies.
It’ll drive the issue underground which may not be a bad thing if you can use criminal law to properly penalise illegal bookies
I have a very addictive personality, but I have learnt through failure that no matter how hard you try you can’t ever properly win in the end, obviously you get big wins every so often but in the long term you don’t, I still bet but nowhere near as I used to
I do my betting online these days but when I used to actually go into the betting shop in town, the same guy was just constantly in there pretty much all day, has done this for years now, I still see him when I’m ever in town having a chat with people outside, it’s not a healthy way to live
Bothers me to no end to see high streets only populated by betting shops.
Councils have done a better job of preventing new shops in recent years
Gambling will always exist. I am absolutely against the industry being able to operate one millimeter beyond what is necessary but if you make it illegal then it will become impossible to prevent even more ruthless exploitation of the vulnerable.
I completely agree. The most compulsive of gamblers will always find a way either through illegal or legal means unless they get the help they need .
The counter points i’ve seen on this particular issue is that illegal bookies can’t rely on civil law to pursue debts whereas legal businesses can. Similar argument applies to payday loan companies with criminal rates of interest on their loans.
Bookies themselves don’t persue debt. It’s illegal to bet on credit, so where punters do incur debt from legitimate sources its more likely to be a bank or indeed a payday loan company chasing what are effectively gambling debts.
Illegal bookies may not be able to use civil law but their tactics to reclaim debt would undoubtedly be far more unpleasant.
Good news hopefully
The details of the legislation are still to be decided but it is now expected the government will forbid gambling companies having a presence on football kits, be that as the main sponsor on the chest or on a shirt sleeve. The Athletic contacted No 10 Downing Street and the DCMS but the government declined to comment.
