Sport’s gambling problems magnified by the pandemic
Gambling has become worryingly normalised in sport and the pandemic is magnifying the problem to alarming levels
LIKE many of us, Oisín McConville watched plenty of sport over Christmas. There was little else to do. He enjoyed the darts from Ally Pally as well as the Premier League, given he has two young sons obsessed with football. There was a time though when McConville, a Manchester United supporter, couldn’t watch soccer on television. For a few years, following his treatment for gambling addiction, he had to detach himself from the sporting soap opera across the Irish Sea.
‘After coming out of treatment, I didn’t watch the Premier League and I’m a huge soccer fan. I didn’t read newspapers, either. I know there are players who never read a word written about them, but I wasn’t like that, I loved seeing what was being said about me or Armagh. But I had to avoid all that. Fortunately, I am in the right headspace now to watch it because my two sons are mad about it,’ McConville explains.
He is not the only viewer to notice that gambling advertising has reached saturation point. ‘It is very stark and impossible to escape now,’ he reckons. ‘Even if there is no advertising during the game, it is still on the shirts, on the advertising hoarding. The darts was sponsored by a betting company.’
In August 2019, gambling companies initiated a voluntary ‘whistle-to-whistle’ ban during televised soccer matches. That is why Ray Winstone no longer appears at half-time, announcing the odds on Mo Salah or Sergio Aguero scoring the next goal. While it was a welcome step, some feel its application is merely a sticking plaster.
‘The whistle-to-whistle ban was the first acceptance by the industry that advertising is harmful, so in that way it was encouraging,’ says James Grimes, who set up the The Big Step charity, which wants to end English football’s association with gambling.
It’s estimated that the global sports betting market was worth roughly €700 billion in 2019 and soccer accounted for 70 per cent of that, proving it is more of a driver now than horse racing. In the 2018 World Cup for example, more than $36.4 billion was staked. In that context, it is easy to understand why more than half of the 44 clubs in the Premier League and Championship have a betting company as a shirt sponsor.
Barry Grant of the Extern Problem Gambling Project doesn’t think the whistle-to-whistle ban goes far enough. ‘It effectively means there’s no adverts at half-time but people don’t just turn a match on at kickoff. They want the pre-match analysis and there are plenty of ads before the match.’
‘What we are hearing on our helpline and from family members is the gambling advertising feels nonstop. It has reached complete saturation point. You can’t escape it and what’s of more concern is that much more of their marketing spend has gone to online advertising, which is even harder to police. It’s all based on algorithms so if you are of a certain age, support a certain team, follow certain sports, you are bombarded by these ads. It needs to be tackled now,’ Grant says.
A recent study by UCD and Nottingham Trent University of advertising during live televised GAA, soccer and rugby games here found that gambling ads were shown during 75 per cent of the games. The research also revealed that 230 advertisements in 65 popular sporting events were broadcast before the watershed, meaning they could be viewed by children.
A couple of weeks ago, in response to the number of patients they are now treating for gambling addiction, the College of Psychiatrists of Ireland released a discussion paper. Within it, they recommended that gambling adverts on television and radio should not be permitted before the watershed while ads on billboards and public transport should not be allowed at all.
The College also called for a ban on gambling advertising within sports in Ireland, similar to the GAA’s admirable initiative at Congress in 2018 when they decided not to accept sponsorship or advertising from the gambling industry.
They believe that gambling addiction has become a major public health issue in this country, afflicting around 40,000 people. While that is less than one per cent of the population, research last year revealed Ireland suffered the third highest per capita gambling losses in the world, just behind Australia and Singapore.
‘The paper came from frustration that the issue isn’t highlight even when we are seeing more people reporting to us with this condition,’ said Dr William Flannery, president of the college. ‘So, we wanted to highlight it. This addiction is much more hidden than say alcohol or drugs, and there is much more exposure of adolescents to this activity through the association with sport, so much so that it can become normalised in the adolescent mind as socially acceptable.’
The college has also called for the appointment of a gambling regulator as a matter of urgency. This has been a sore point for those trying to highlight the dangers of how sport has become intrinsically linked to the gambling industry.
It has been over seven years since then-Minister for Justice Alan Shatter published the heads of the gambling control bill that would establish a regulatory authority for an industry worth between €6 to €8 billion to the economy. However, successive governments have dragged their heels on legislation. In March 2019, David Stanton, who was Minister of State with special responsibility for gambling regulation, approved the establishment of a regulator.
But almost two years later, Ireland remains one of the few countries in Europe without a regulator. In the UK, the same position has seen some bookmaking firms incur heavy fines for circumventing advertising rules, including one of £11 million in 2019.
When contacted this week, the Department of Justice insisted work is continuing in developing the legislation for the appointment of a regulator and ‘the Minister hopes to be in a position to bring proposals in that regard to Government this year.’
They also pointed out that responsibility for regulation of gambling is currently spread across a range of departments and organisations, which makes the drafting of legislation for a new independent regulator complex.
Irish bookmakers have stated that they want the regulatory body established as soon as possible. The delay makes little sense to those working at the coalface with people struggling with gambling problems.
‘It has sat there for nearly eight years, the longest that it took legislation to come into law before that was the public health alcohol bill, which took three and a half years,’ Grant says. ‘Alan Shatter, who published the heads of the bill, said it should have taken 18 months. Every other EU country has a gambling regulator. The UK has one with farreaching powers. We don’t.’
As the country enters another severe lockdown, the worry is that there will be another spike in gambling problems.
‘At the start of the first lockdown, we were very quiet which was strange because it was Cheltenham, when we would be very busy,’ Grant recalls. ‘Within a few weeks, that changed. People were sitting at home, bored and maybe had dabbled in gambling before, but now put on a few more bets. The only sport that was on for a time was Belarussian Premier League and people were betting on that.’
McConville believes that this latest lockdown is of particular concern, as elite sport is continuing. ‘I was a bit naive at the start,’ the 2002 All-Ireland winner remembers. ‘I thought it might be a bit of respite for people and families because all sport was shut down, too.
‘But it went the opposite way. People still found a way to gamble. There were online casinos. Belarussian Premier League suddenly became very popular. I heard one story of someone gambling a couple of thousand quid on an Azerbaijan under-21 game, because it was the only sport on. The figures speak for themselves. Gambling companies made an extra 60 per cent of revenue during the pandemic.
‘I am more concerned this time, which feels like lockdown number 20,’ McConville maintains. ‘All elite sport is continuing, so people don’t have to go searching too hard for something to bet on. In March and April, people were getting out of the house, going for walks, exercising. People were staying in touch via Zoom but everyone’s sick of Zoom at this stage. So, there will be more sitting in the house, and there will be sport on. People could fall back into bad habits.’
The industry maintains there are numerous safeguards in place to protect the vulnerable, including stake limits.
‘Throughout the pandemic, IBA
The addiction is much more hidden than alcohol or drugs
members have considered the safety and well-being of our colleagues and customers to be our highest priority,’ Sharon Byrne of the Irish Bookmakers Association stated. ‘We are keenly aware that people may be suffering additional pressures at this time and our members are committed to continuing to identify and interact with customers who exhibit indicators of potential harmful play.
‘Additionally, IBA members rs who offer online betting have a number of measures in place to assist customers in gambling ng responsibly. These include deposit sit limits, loss limits, reality checks, ks, short-term breaks and self-exclulusion. Operators also ensure these ese tools are clearly signposted online ine and on social media, including ing links to support service.’
However, according to McConConville, one of the main issues lies li with an industry effectively regulating itself.
‘Samantha Thomas, who works with the AFL and NRL in Australia around gambling, came over here for a talk and anyone who has been in Australia, knows their relationship with gambling and the pokie machines in the corner of every pub, and she called Ireland ‘the wild west’ of gambling. And this was someone coming from Australia.
‘If you walk into a bookies in Sydney or Melbourne and want to put on a $2,000 bet, you need your driving license and utility bill.
‘There are no such safeguards in place over here.’
And in this environment, sport has become deeply entangled with gambling. Even in analysis of games. Terms like ‘beat the handicap’ have become commonplace.
McConville has developed a reputation as one of the sharpest Gaelic football pundits on television and radio, but you will never hear him mention the odds.
‘It is part of the jargon of sport now – all sports. Analysts will talk about odds before games. I deliberately don’t do that, but some do and they don’t even realise it because it is so embedded in how we talk about sport,’ he said.
‘I don’t want to go down the road of telling other analysts what to say
or not to say. All I want ti is t to keep having a conversation about this and make p e o p l e aware that people are in real trouble, families are in real trouble.
‘I am not on a crusade to stop gambling, I know a lot of people do it and enjoy it without ever developing a problem, but we have to realise that a lot of people do develop a problem, that it has the highest rate of suicide of any addiction and is a silent killer in this country.’
McConville’s words are borne out by a recent Swedish study that showed problem gamblers were 15 times more likely to take their own lives.
Barry Grant has helped people who have claimed they can’t even escape gambling within their peer interactions. ‘It is just linked to how people follow sport now,’ Grant says. Such is the online grip of online companies, one of the first thing recommended to those who seek help is that they go back to a non-smartphone.
‘Go back 25 years, and sports betting was about the horses and dogs. The only accumulators were yankees, the only football bet was the pools. But now they have made football matches like a casino, you can bet on practically anything. Number of corners in one half. First player booked. Rugby is the same. First try-scorer. Last try-scorer.
‘And even when sports disassociate themselves from gambling, as the GAA did two years ago in Congress when they voted not to accept any sponsorship, people are still betting on the games. People come to us, having lost vast sums on the overs and unders bet in Gaelic Games.’
Grant works with Tony O’Reilly, the former postmaster whose remarkable story is chronicled in Tony 10. He went from a €1 bet on Patrick Kluivert scoring in the 1998 World Cup to losing millions, on one occasion betting more than he earned in a year on a Filipino basketball match.
O’Reilly’s experience shows that it is always possible to find something to bet on. ‘Not only can you back on anything in football, you can bet on anything 24/7,’ Grant says. ‘Bet on the next point in tennis matches in Argentina or Thailand, there might be hundreds of thousands staked on these games and only a half a dozen people there watching them.’ James Grimes points out: ‘When alcohol advertising was stopped, it was a collective thing by the Premier League. Five clubs had alcohol shirt sponsors and they decided to stop accepting them because of the effect it has on a young audience.
‘So, the Premier League know a quarter of their audience is under 18 and still allow sponsorship by gambling companies.
‘Football that has normalised sport’s relationship to gambling to such an extent that it is intrinsic now, you are made to feel you can’t enjoy any sport without having a bet on it.’
‘When the fun stops, stop,’ is the message in the advertising that has saturated the coverage of sport. But perhaps the message should be changed. That there is still fun in sport without a bet.
ANYONE struggling with gambling can contact problem gambling at info@problemgambling.ie or visit problemgambling.ie There is also help
available at rutlandcentre.ie or gamblersanoymous.ie.
There is a Gambling Addiction Helpline and Free Counselling Service at 1800 936 725