Football is milking society’s gambling habit for every cent
Banning a Leeds teenager for betting when clubs are awash with sponsors from the industry highlights a complex problem for the game
What a week it has been for gambling and football, a relationship so fundamental to the game that one envisages we are not far off the day when bookmakers are offering odds on the next professional footballer to fall foul of the Football Association rules on betting.
What price another teenager? On Tuesday, Jordan Stevens, a 19-year-old Leeds United midfielder who has played one senior game, was fined and banned for six weeks for £510.12 worth of bets placed last season, five of which were on Leeds games. Stevens, who plays in a shirt adorned with the betting company 32Red in a league sponsored by Sky Bet could at least say that his account with the Championship’s key partner demonstrated some brand loyalty – although unfortunately it cuts no ice with an FA independent commission.
There is nothing like football to expose the schizophrenic relationship between society and its ubiquitous gambling habit, one that is legislated against by the game’s governing body and simultaneously embraced by its clubs. There is nothing like banning a hapless teenager for demonstrating that the game does not know what to do with the problem, other than to keep milking it for every last pound, euro and yuan.
You can excuse Stevens for wondering if the club’s official betting partner was supposed to be a friend when these entities have invaded every part of the average club’s life – from the banter-heavy kit launches to the small portrait scale adverts that hang above the urinals in the stands. Some say the gambling industry has taken the place of the tobacco industry in British sport but in fact it has discovered more space to exploit than the old lung-plunderers ever managed to inhabit.
At Everton, where Yerry Mina plays in a shirt sponsored by the Kenyan online gambling platform
Sport Pesa, the Colombian naturally assumed there should be no problem with him appearing in an advertisement for an online bookmaker in his own country. He did so in return for a payment to his own charitable foundation helping disadvantaged children, but his endorsement ended up costing him a £10,000 fine from the FA. The house, as Mina found out to his cost, always wins.
Meanwhile at Liverpool, Chelsea and Spurs the clubs have ceased partnerships with the Russian online platform 1XBET since it was suspended in the United