OWN GOAL THAT’S THE HEIGHT OF CYNICISM
From a former gambling addict who lost £100k...
WAYNE Rooney’s decision to accept a £ 7.8million deal to promote a betting company on his football shirt is a kick in the teeth for hundreds of thousands of gambling addicts, and recovering addicts – like me – in Britain.
Even worse, it is cynical and irresponsible behaviour that puts his own young fans at greatest risk.
As the father of four boys and a man who has admitted in the past to his own problems with gambling, Rooney’s actions by agreeing to promote online casino 32Red seem to me the height of hypocrisy.
No matter how reckless he may have been with his money in the past, Rooney – a former England captain who is his country’s record goal- scorer – is a millionaire many times over.
He cannot need this deal to shore up his own finances.
Some in-roads have been made in recent years to rein back rampant football-associated advertising by betting companies: for instance, they are not allowed to put their logos on football shirts bought by children.
But why would they worry! youngsters will be clamouring to buy replica shirts bearing Rooney’s name and new number – 32 – following his surprise move back to the UK from Washington DC, to join Derby County as player-coach in January.
yet the advertisements around gambling do colossal damage to young minds, and the companies that profit from them are always seeking new ways to intensify their appeal. Even the ‘ health warnings’ are cynically aimed at boosting takings.
Consider the best-known of the ‘ gambling awareness’ slogans... ‘When the fun stops, Stop!’ That word ‘FUN’ is written much larger than the rest of the message, and it is decorated with Las Vegas lights. The subliminal message is: ‘Gambling is fun!’
BETTING firms are trying to outdo each other, the way cigarette advertisers used to before the clampdown on tobacco products. And if gambling companies are now part sponsors of player deals, their hold over clubs must be stronger than ever. Derby County should be thinking of their vulnerable young fans, not the money.
i was 16, barely more than a child, when i started putting bets on football matches. Growing up in a Norfolk town, i loved the game, and i believed the ads that said: ‘ The result matters more when there’s money on it.’ it seemed a cool way to increase the enjoyment i already had in the game.
This was in the mid-Noughties before the mood started to change. i could bet as much as i wanted, without limit... whether i could afford to or not.
Very quickly the idea of winning a bit of cash was completely outweighed by the buzz of betting. Win or lose, i was hooked.
That went on for six or seven years as i became a helpless addict. i didn’t see myself that way, of course: to me, a gambler was an older man, hunched over a fruit machine with a cigarette in his mouth. i was nothing like that – i was working, i had friends and loving parents, i was bright and popular. i was also completely in denial.
Then in 2013 my family was struck by the most appalling tragedy. My 50-year- old father Richard, a car dealer, was involved in a car crash with a
drunk driver. Though my dad was not to blame in any way, it was horrific: a baby in the other car was killed. Worse still was to come, when a routine scan in A&E revealed a tumour on Dad’s pancreas. He died six weeks later.
i came home from university to help my mother, Janice, but i was completely unable to cope with the onslaught of emotions. My father had been my best friend. Addiction was my escape. i realised it was easier to face losing £500 on a football game, no matter how deeply in debt i already was, than to deal with the nightmare of grief that overshadowed my family.
i don’t feel my story is uncommon. There are an estimated 400,000 problem gamblers in the UK, a high proportion of them young men. Betting is an overwhelming addiction – classified by psychiatrists as such in 2013. it can transport you to a different world where all reality is bypassed.
As my addiction spiralled, the costs piled up. And the financial price, though very significant, was the least of them. i was never in a well-paid job, yet i was able to rack up losses of at least £100,000. Losing didn’t matter – it was just an excuse to keep gambling.
To feed the habit, i lied, i borrowed and i took out a long series of pay day loans, 20 of them, at exorbitant interest.
Mum could see i had a serious problem but neither of us knew how to address it, when i wouldn’t even admit there was anything wrong.
The final crisis came on my 28th birthday last year, when i gambled away £2,000 on fixed odds betting terminals.
i was supposed to be in work but i went home and shut myself in my room to cry. i stayed in there for three days, barely eating. i wasn’t suicidal, but i knew i couldn’t live like this any more.
THAT was the last day i ever put a bet on. i forced myself to be honest about my addiction, first with my Mum and then with my employer, friends and family. i’ve been clean for 18 months now, and i’ve thrown myself into the charity project The Big Step, part of Gambling With Lives, a charity started by parents bereaved by gambling- related suicide. Together we are working to urge the football world to rethink its relationship with the gambling industry that exploits it.
i’ve heard from a lot of parents who have lost children to gambling addiction. Their stories are harrowing and heartbreaking, and they deserve to be heard. i’d like to see the betting business reformed, with warnings as prominent as the photographs on cigarette packets.
People need to understand that gambling costs lives. i thought we were getting the message across, to football clubs as well as fans. Perhaps naively, i believed a cultural shift was afoot and that society would cease to see betting as glamorous, as smart, as laddish, as brave. Wayne Rooney has just made that very much harder.