JACKPOT OF UK’S ONLINE BETTING SHARKS
MOORED in Monaco, the 175ft superyacht Hurricane Run will cost you £200,000 a week to hire, but for its owner Michael Tabor, that is a drop in the ocean. The vessel, which he named after his champion racehorse, sleeps 12, boasts a spa bath, gym, and heated limestone floors. But then, for a man in his position, that is to be expected.
Tabor, a former London bookie once banned by the Jockey Club, owns the online gambling giant BetVictor. He has built up a £600 million fortune. And he is riding the crest of an online gambling wave that has seen the wealth of Britain’s betting titans swell by almost £3billion to more than £19billion in just a year.
A plethora of multi-millionaires and billionaires has been created in the process. Thirteen were named among the country’s top 100 richest people – they include a former computer programmer and an American online porn queen. Just eight of them, featured here, are worth a total of £10 billion.
Technology has allowed Britain’s bookmakers to create their own Big Bang with poker, casino games, bingo and new forms of sports betting such as ‘in-play’, where you can place a wager during the match.
Hollywood hardman Ray Winstone is the face of Bet365, Brazilian football icons Ronaldo and Neymar have promoted PokerStars, and Olympian Victoria Pendleton has taken to the screen for Betfair.
Thanks to computers, tablets and smartphones, Britain’s bookmakers have found new ways to lure increasing numbers of people into an industry that was once largely confined to high street outlets with frosted windows, plus a smattering of casinos catering to high rollers.
And, as the public has discovered, online gambling is not just convenient – it can be extremely addictive and hugely destructive.
Behind the glitzy facade promoted by Britain’s betting barons lie broken lives, destitution and, in some cases, suicide. Punters can gamble 24 hours a day online, and, in contrast with regulated betting shops, they can use credit cards.
Whole new social groups are joining in, including increasing numbers of women and university students. There are an estimated 500,000 gambling addicts in the UK, and the NHS has started to offer medication for the worst cases.
Alarmingly, experts warn that children are being drawn in as parents unwittingly allow them to start playing for ‘credits’ rather than money on games of chance widely available on Facebook and other social media outlets.
Like other addicts, Josh Jones found the lure of internet gambling to be inescapable. On the day he jumped to his death from the ninth floor of a London office building, his addiction and the crippling loans that funded it had spiralled out of control.
A popular 23-year-old maths graduate and talented musician, Josh had the support of a loving family and was enjoying the start of a promising career after winning a place as a trainee chartered accountant with PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
But as he told his parents before his death in July last year, the lure of PokerStars, in particular, was too great. At one point he imposed a six-month selfrestriction, preventing him from betting on the site. Yet at the end of it, PokerStars sent him an automatic email notifying him he was free to rejoin. And he did.
At the family home in Swindon, Josh’s mother Kim, 61, a retired civil engineer, said: ‘If companies like PokerStars didn’t exist, I honestly believe that Josh would be here with us today. We tried so hard to help him. We took control of his student loan money when he blew the first month of it on gambling after starting university.’
On the day he died, Josh gambled away his £2,400 monthly wages.
‘The Government makes a lot of money from gambling and the people who own the gambling companies make millions. There should be a change in legislation to make them more accountable,’ Mrs Jones said.
Critics say the social ‘normalisation’ of gambling began with the ‘Big Bang’ liberalisation of the City in 1986 and the creation of the National Lottery eight years later, which propelled gambling into the mainstream. The liberalising legislation of 2005 – which the Labour Government claimed would promote better regulation and ‘socially responsible’ gambling – has, according to critics, done the opposite by relaxing advertising rules, leading to a relentless rise in gambling.
The online profits are vast. According to the Gambling Commission, takings totalled £26.3 billion in 2014, up 28 per cent on the previous recorded year, and double the turnover of 2011. The six months between April and October 2014 alone show a turnover of £18.8billion, indicating an explosive growth fuelled by slick and relentless TV advertising and online promotions, including ‘free’ bets.
Industry expert Professor Jim Orford, from Birmingham University, said: ‘Online gambling has clearly gone up in terms of popularity and I think it is shifting in terms of customers. There is evidence more women are gambling. The rates of problem gambling are difficult to measure, but it looks as if it is more concentrated with younger people.
‘University students is one group
My son would still be here if it wasn’t for these websites
of concern. They know mathematics and think they can beat companies at their own game. They think they can become professional gamblers.
‘The most obvious thing about online gambling is its sheer availability. It is ever-present in our homes. If you are trying to give up drinking, you do not test yourself by going into a pub. But here you have a betting shop on your computer and on your mobile phone.’ He believes that asking gambling companies to tackle the problem is ‘like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop’.
He adds: ‘I am critical of the Government decision that self-regulation of the betting industry works as long as the industry coughs up bit of money towards research. The Government does not have to put money into it themselves, but the industry is merely appearing to be concerned about problem gambling – as long as it does not materially affect its interests and profits.
‘They control gambling research because they fund it. The gambling industry has very much corrupted the public sphere. I have said that the Government is guilty of collusion with the gambling industry. It is complicit. Corrupted is absolutely the right word. Online gambling is still a minority pursuit but it continues to increase. We could be in for something far more serious.’
Not that this sort of talk will ruffle the waters of Windermere, where Betfred owner Peter Done owns a £2.3million holiday home to go with his properties in Cheshire and the South of France. There is little chance that Mr Tabor will have to sell his yacht or auction off his racehorses any time soon. Or that Peter Coates, from Bet365, will abandon Stoke City, the football club that he owns.
Because as we all grow ever more addicted to smartphones, and the army of regular punters continues to swell, it is clear that for these men, at least, online gambling is the safest bet of all.