Author: Addiction is no surprise when we have a casino in our pocket
Scots are carrying a potentially life-ruining casino in their pocket, according to an industry expert.
Business journalist Rob Davies – who has covered the gambling industry for six years – said gambling had saturated society, with betting companies increasingly sophisticated in parting punters from their money.
The rise of smartphones, social media, the pandemic and societal changes have triggered an explosion in gambling addiction, Davies said.
The Guardian journalist and author of Jackpot: How Gambling Conquered Britain, said: “The gambling act gets written in 2005 then gets enacted in 2007 and between those two dates the smartphone is invented. At that point, everyone has essentially got a casino in their pocket with 24/7 access to the casino and it becomes open to everybody really.
“Then parallel to that you’ve got the explosion in the number of football games that are broadcast. In the early 2000s, it was only two or three games a week. Now, it’s almost all of them, so the gambling companies now have the opportunity to harness the national game.”
He said that in just a few years, a business historically rooted in the racetrack and the casino table had transformed into something much bigger and more pervasive. He said: “It had become a relentless automaton programmed to separate punters from their money by any means, at any cost. Gambling companies inveigled their way into our lives, addressing us in both our living rooms and our public spaces, becoming household names in the process. They did so despite the fact that many of their products present unusually pernicious dangers, most of which have, until very recently, flown under the radar of public consciousness.”
Football betting has played a huge part in normalising gambling and providing more opportunities to place bets. Davies said: “You now have social media added to the cocktail with a massive growth in football betting. That’s one of the fastest growing areas of gambling and has overtaken horseracing now. Social media is proportionately used more often by young people.
“The gambling firms are adept at exploiting that. They use social media a lot, they tap into fan culture, podcasts and things like that. One development that played into all of that was the invention of in-play betting – so you can bet on who will get the next corner or the number of throw-ins and things like that.”
Once gambling had saturated target demographic areas – such as football fans – they began seeking out new customers – such as young women. He said: “They are thinking – well, how do we grow this market? The one area where they didn’t really have much impact was with women.
Women proportionately are less attracted to sports betting and more to casino-type products. You used to have the old-fashioned idea of going down the bingo but you can now do that on your phone. “And that’s, you know, cross-sold with casino products and so on and they will dress them up in kind of female friendly clothing in pink colours or with subject matters that they feel are more appealing to women.
“We’ve seen an increasing proportion of women receiving treatment for gambling problems. They used to be really a minority but they’re very sadly catching up.”
Unlike drug or alcohol addiction which can be obvious to friends and family, a person’s deepening gambling addiction can be hidden, according to Davies. He said: “If you’re addicted to gambling then unless you’re a multi-billionaire, it almost always leads to financial ruin.
“People can’t really see what is happening to you. Unlike alcohol and narcotics, it’s not written all over your face. So you could be on the sofa with your partner right next to you and you’ve just blown your mortgage but they are totally unaware.”
Gambling among children was a growing issue. He said: “There is research that has shown a high correlation
between loot boxes in games and people with gambling addiction. Some young people are more susceptible and attracted to loot boxes because they have these gambling style features.
“It’s an interesting kind of a regulatory loophole because the regulator in Great Britain can’t actually do anything about loot boxes because they don’t technically count as gambling. The reason they don’t count as gambling is because they are not what’s known as ‘money’s worth’, you can’t cash out items for money. You’re not getting an item that you can go and then sell in the real world, even though in every other respect the mechanics very much like gambling.
“It is an outdated concept. What do 15-year-olds consider to have value? It doesn’t have to be cash. It may be something they can exchange in a marketplace online with other gamers.”
Betting companies continue to employ an arsenal of clever tricks to tempt punters into spending more money. He said: “One of the products that has emerged in recent years is boosted odds where the bookmaker gives you much longer odds than you would usually get, say 15–1 that a good team such as Chelsea will beat a weaker side like Fulham. Sometimes this will be on offer to new customers only, as a means of driving new account sign-ups.”