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It adds that one in three problem gamblers earn £10,400 a year or less – meaning that they could legally stake a month’s wages in three minutes.
He could stake the whole lot on a greyhound race lasting 25 seconds or a 5f sprint that’s done and dusted in under a minute and nobody is suggesting stake limits on those, quite the opposite. Sure, you CAN win on racing but addicts who stand there punting favs all day long won’t. And there’s plenty of those around.
Now they’re like clinics with staff who know nowt about medicine, how it works or patient care.
You can’t expect shop staff to have any ability to care for gambling addicts any more than you’d expect a barman to be able to treat liver disease. Many are on barely above minimum wage, they don’t get paid for that. That’s a problem for their paymasters or failing that the government, not holding my breath on either.
For the record I do think the stake limits are obscene but you can’t blame the firms for taking advantage of the situation. Until they are forced to cut them they won’t. That will have to come from the Government.
It adds that one in three problem gamblers earn £10,400 a year or less – meaning that they could legally stake a month’s wages in three minutes.
He could stake the whole lot on a greyhound race lasting 25 seconds or a 5f sprint that’s done and dusted in under a minute and nobody is suggesting stake limits on those, quite the opposite. Sure, you CAN win on racing but addicts who stand there punting favs all day long won’t. And there’s plenty of those around.
Are you having a laugh Richard? “He could stake the whole lot on a greyhound race or a 5f sprint and no one is suggesting limits on those”
There already are, voluntarily imposed by bookmakers dependent on the horse or greyhound.
You would have no problem doing the months wages in 3 minutes on the FOBT’s but it could take several months if not years to do the same amount on the horses with the lily-livered bookmakers dependent on the horse. In fact you’d probably give up.
Nobody this side of the counter is suggesting limits on horses is what I meant. Worked in a bookies for five years and took plenty of four figure bets on horses (varying grades of racing) so it certainly is possible to lose your month’s hard earned as quickly as on FOBTs. Can’t remember the limits exactly but it was at least a grand to an unknown customer on anything under about 2s or 3s before you even had to get on the blower to the traders. That’s a couple of years ago though so what it is now I don’t know.
Interesting to read about the BHA’s take on this:
Supposedly enough shops would close to cost British racing a minimum of £55m. Leaving aside the issue of whether the closures would remove excess and restore balance to the High Street, £400m of the Jockey Club’s planned £500m investment in the sport is/was NOT going to come from the sale of Kempton, therefore, the JC is quite able to dip a hand into its deep pocket. £55m is loose change to the JC. Might mean it won’t be able to put on glorified dog racing at Newmarket – what a shame!
Racing existed long before 2005 and presumably bookmakers managed to profit from it all that time.
And with a lot less shops and without the booming online facet, Richard. Given that the big firms indeed always make a profit would it be in their interest to close so many outlets if doing so is really going to be so catastrophic for racing which in turn might dent their profit.
As far as I’m concerned British horse racing can go **** itself if it wants to earn a living off the back of the “crack cocaine” of gambling.
Time for Nick Rust & Co to grow a pair.
living off the back of the “crack cocaine” of gambling.
That and filthy lucre from the despotic regimes of ‘shithole’ countries in the Middle East. Great game innit?
Has it not occurred to the BHA that restriction of stakes on FOBTs will mean that the those who play them will hold on to their readies for longer and therefore perhaps divert more than they do now to betting on races
I was surprised by The BHA statement because it makes them look so out of date, and so out of touch with people who contribute to racing in the UK, and so unaware of the ways the world has changed over the last few decades. It is no longer acceptable for people in a strong position to exploit people who are in a weak position. FOBTs are instant result/instant replay machines, not like buying a Euromillions lottery ticket and waiting a day or two to find out if you have won nothing, a few pounds, a decent amount, a lot, or huge amount. Behavioural pyschologists say that for some people the instant result/instant replay machines are addictive. So addictive, even being told you will always lose in the medium to long term because it is fixed that way, that some people cannot resist gambling all the money they have. This is why the bookies profits from these machines are so massive and important to them. It is obviously unacceptable to follow around non-functioning alcoholics and take money out of their wallets when they are drunk; it should be unacceptable to do the equivalent to addicts of instant result/instant replay gambling machines.
Nike shareholders and managers made huge sums of money between 1975 and 1991, after moving production away from the USA, until the company nearly went bust when people found out, and spoke up about, the exploitation of child and adult workers in their Asian factories. In these days of social media and instant communication, the BHA is treading on dangerous ground saying it would be terrible that the bookies might not be able to afford to give them as much punters money as before if FOBTs are more strictly controlled. Benefitting from the misfortune of others is being on the wrong side of history. The BHA would be likely to garner more approval by tapping-up the owners for extra money, since they, not the BHA, would be the loser if bookies paid less, because prize money would decrease. The owners already put £750 million to £850 million into UK horseracing each year, which is then redistributed to stable staff, vets, transporters, breeders, feed merchants, racecourses, the BHA, etc. Oh yes, and some of that money, about 20%, goes back to owners through prize money.
Richard88: “You can’t expect shop staff to have any ability to care for gambling addicts any more than you’d expect a barman to be able to treat liver disease.” – In the UK it has been illegal, since 2005, for any bar staff to serve alcoholic drinks to someoneone who is drunk. How they are to know that is anybody’s guess, and it is rarely implemented according to the national press coverage over Christmas and New Year.
Drone: It is worthwhile fixing what one can fix. But I do agree, on the wider world view, it would be good to get into a position where you can fix the next thing, then the next, etc. Or get into a position where you can afford to ditch colleagues you wish you didn’t have.
So now the BHA who, as far as I am aware, is supportive of gambling charities and organisations to help addicts and embraces the ‘gamble responsibly’ campaign says it is against a cut to a £2 maximum FOBT stake. Any respect I had for Nick Rust has gone, he is a hypocrite:
What I don’t get with all this moral positioning though is, what are the bookmakers doing that is so different to a casino? there you can lose as much money as you want on a roulette, for example? and bookmakers are in the business of gambling and trying to make money from that, are they not?
I believe it’s because the proliferation of betting shops promoting FOBTs on High Streets, especially in relatively deprived areas, are easy to access for those least able to afford losing money and those with a gambling problem. Such folk are welcomed whereas I’m not sure they would be able to get into a casino all that often even if they went out of their way to do so.
surely Golden miller that’s a bit like saying ban crack, because people can find it easily on the street corners, rather than walking to the town center where it’s also easily available?!
I suppose that comparison can just about be made, Judge. A better one would be a person paying higher prices at their local corner shop because they don’t have the means or inclination to go to an out of town supermarket where goods are cheaper. There’s no doubt there is interference by the state re FOBTs. Should people be free to potentially severely damage their and others lives? Or is the government right to try to restrict the damage and cost to society caused by, say, 8 betting shops in a small area all with multiple £100 max stake FOBTs? All I am saying is that on the one hand I’m sure the BHA supports responsible gambling yet they must see a lot of folk are incapable of that but the BHA are not prepared to to help these people by supporting a £2 max. Why? Because it may leave a £55m hole. But this could be plugged by their rich friends, the Jockey Club, and then the irresponsible, the addicted and their dependents could be helped (saved from themselves!) Rich vs poor, class, politics – it’s just the same big argument that haunts Capitalist societies repeated in microcosm per the FOBT issue.
“What I don’t get with all this moral positioning though is, what are the bookmakers doing that is so different to a casino? there you can lose as much money as you want on a roulette, for example? and bookmakers are in the business of gambling and trying to make money from that, are they not?”
Judge, there’s a mighty big difference! If you walk into a casino and play roullette or blackjack maybe, you are playing a game of chance, against a ball and a spinning wheel, or multiple decks of cards. The ball has to make at least three revolutions, and the wheel must make a minimum amount of revolutions too. It’s a game of chance after you have placed your bets.
When you play internet roullette, blackjack, or on a FOBT, you are playing against a computer program. A computer program which is in essence, controlled by the Bookmakers themselves. Ask yourself, do you really believe that it’s random?
This is why bookmakers love FOBT’s. It started with virtual racing, this gave them the information that enough mugs will throw their money onto something computerised, which the outcome could be random, or maybe not. I know exactly where my feelings lay on this matter. They are preying on weak people.
As I’ve never played these infernal things I don’t really know, but I imagine it’s programmed to pay out a certain percentage of what the player puts in, which is how normal fruit machines and quiz machines work as well. So if you put a £100 quid in you might get £80 quid back. If punters put in enough over time the bookies will make vast amounts.
As for the casino thing, maybe a roulette wheel in a casino is not “fixed”, but they also work along similar lines. There’s an extra number that favours the casino so that overtime they win a lot and it’s basically impossible to beat the house over a long period if you play a straight game.
It’s not rocket science is it. A friend of mine won about 20k off a casino in france- about a week later he had lost it all. also very addictive.
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