Can our clubs really complain if all bets are off?
CALL it an intervention. An enforced period of cold turkey that will cause anguished cries of despair and warnings of impending oblivion.
Will it work? Can football’s addiction to gambling be cured by a government in search of eye-catching headlines and, if you’ll pardon the expression, a quick fix?
Well, maybe. Even if some would put the odds against Scotland’s national sport, in particular, making a quick and full recovery right up there with our chances of winning the next World Cup.
Some can already picture the scene, a couple of years down the line. A proud politician posing for the cameras and preening about the ‘complete success’ of the operation. While sadly lamenting the fact that one of the patients just happened to expire in the process…
Cheer up. It probably won’t come to that. Football finds a way to survive. Even in the face of terrifying environmental changes.
Still, news that the government in Westminster — with rare support from the opposition — is considering a ban on bookies as shirt sponsors will undoubtedly cause many in Scottish football to come down with a bad case of the shakes.
Teams sponsored by turf accountants, you say? We’ve got entire competitions — just the top four divisions and both major cup competitions, at least for a few months yet — proudly tied into an industry falling further into disrepute with each passing revelation about its practices and policies.
Ladbrokes sponsor the Premiership, as well as Leagues One, Two and Three. William Hill have the Scottish Cup. And Betfred back the old League Cup.
In terms of individual clubs, Celtic are still in the early days of a staggering seven-year shirt sponsorship deal with Dafabet.
Rangers are tied into 32Red until 2021 at least. And Motherwell are part of a rather ingenious Paddy Power deal that keeps their jerseys free of logos, while generating loads of positive publicity.
Intriguingly, the Scottish Cup, League Cup and SPFL deals are all due to expire at the end of this season. Which might become pertinent.
Because, without getting into a dirty debate over devolution and reserved powers, Sportsmail understands that any reform of the Gambling Act — the very thing planned by the Department for Digital, Media, Culture and
Sport — would apply throughout the UK.
Not that you’d expect anyone at the Scottish government, the people who brought you the smoking ban and minimum alcohol pricing, taking a stand on behalf of gambling’s grip on the beautiful game. Nobody is going to choose that as their hill to die on.
Because the bookies haven’t just taken the place of drinks firms on replica shirts the length of the UK.
They have also, in the eyes of many, replaced tobacco firms and booze merchants as Public Enemy No 1.
Look, very few of us believe that putting a quid on a football coupon every Saturday represents a mortal sin, an offence against God’s teaching or a guaranteed path to ruin.
But we’ve all read the stories about betting firms actively encouraging deeply troubled addicts to carry on punting.
Plenty will also be well aware that some of those ‘high-volume clients’ just happen to play the game for a living. What a mess that is.
And surely a majority have, by now, grown sick and tired of every single televised big match coming pre-packaged with pushy ads encouraging you to take up odds boosts, special offers or — the biggest lie of them all — a ‘free bet’. Just as so many sports were once shackled to cigarettes and alcohol, football now has a serious problem with gambling. Of that, there can no longer be any debate.
Like a chain-smoking heavy drinker stumbling from bar room to bookie’s den, pausing only to light up in defence of accidentally inhaling fresh air, the game would appear to care little for those harmed by the excesses of gambling.
Threaten to cut off this supply, then, and you’ll hear all about it. Not least here in Scotland.
Because, while the big clubs can always find another name to plaster on their shirts, putting the most generous payers in the sponsorship market — some have been known to pay double the amount offered by more ‘ethical’ firms — out of bounds to both the SFA and SPFL could hit everyone very hard.
And you’ll undoubtedly also hear clubs and their commercial partners pointing out the difference between this ‘harmless’ form of betting and the plethora of online opportunities — slots, bingo and other assorted computergenerated games where the house always wins — doing serious damage to the gullible. We do whitabootery rather well, after all.
Well, just as a punter can now watch one game, keep tabs on scores elsewhere and stand ready to press the ‘cash out’ button at just the right moment, perhaps this government will be able to multi-task.
Clean up or close down the internet gambling dens, of course. While also putting football into rehab.
Intervene in order to protect people not merely from themselves, but the worst intentions of an industry seeking to use a longstanding — and mostly benign — association with football into cover for something far more menacing.