For the sake of fans and players, clubs should spurn the gambling giants

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/16/for-sake-of-fans-and-players-clubs-should-spurn-gambling-giants

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Two behavioural curiosities, seemingly irreconcilable with our claims to be a sophisticated and progressive society stand above all others in modern Britain.

I suspect if you’d asked a group of enlightened Victorians what aspects of life in the UK would be least likely to survive 150 years hence, zoos would be near the top of their list. They’d have been contemptuous of any suggestion that, as science continued to reveal the wonders of the world to us and to unlock its secrets, we would still be handing over money to gawp at the misery of animals captured for their indolent pleasure. Nor can I imagine that governments then would have participated in the practice by which multibillion-pound gambling corporations are encouraged to prey on vulnerable people.

You could argue that the proliferation of food banks in the world’s fifth largest economy is another perversity of modern British life. These, though, are inevitable when society deems the accumulation of wealth at any human cost to be the definitive measures of success and wellbeing.

Avarice and corporate and political malfeasance were as much characteristics of previous ages as today and will always defy the claims of later generations to be living in fairer and more civilised times. You’d have a better chance standing for the Greens in Texas than you’d have of expelling greed and from corruption from politics.

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However, it wouldn’t be difficult to curb the predatory excesses of the corporate gambling houses. We know who they are and how they make their money. We are also aware of the human cost of gambling addiction. Crucially, we have achieved a degree of success in moving against the tobacco and drinks industries. These, too, were accustomed to selling lies to vulnerable people built upon delusions of contentment and sophistication.

We may have stopped short of banning them but the government has ceased to be a partner in their enterprises and falsehoods. They have done this chiefly by cutting off access to advertising and curtailing the spread of their messages. There was also a recognition that tax revenues on alcohol and tobacco products were being swallowed up by NHS and policing costs.

Mobile phone technology has handed new realms to the gambling godfathers. In 21st-century Britain, we allow every major televised sporting event to be annexed by gambling corporations through the use of online products. The gambling firms know that young men in particular are never more susceptible to their advertising techniques than when, fortified by beer and bonhomie, they are watching their favourite football teams on television.

The Labour party has already signalled that it will introduce a “whistle-to-whistle” ban on in-play betting adverts during major televised sporting events. The gambling industry, accurately predicting the changing of attitudes, has moved to enact its own voluntary restrictions. There’s a strategic element to this belated outbreak of ethics. In the long term, targeting young people – their most lucrative audience – through social media is the key to future profits.

The UK government recently cut the maximum permitted stake on fixed-odds betting terminals from £100 to £2. The former sports minister Tracey Crouch, whose tenacity in the face of bitter and well-funded lobbying led to a review, had previously highlighted the social blight of these machines in areas of multiple deprivation. Individual gamblers lost more than £1,000 on fixed-odds betting terminals, considered the crack cocaine of gambling, on more than 230,000 occasions in one 10-month period. One user lost nearly £15,000 in a single seven-hour session.

Never underestimate the pernicious influence of the gambling industry, though. Crouch felt forced to resign not long after her success in protest at the long delay in implementing the changes after successful lobbying by the industry. Every delayed month is an opportunity for them to make hundreds of millions.

In Scotland came further wretched proof that the victims of the gambling syndicates are not confined to the terraces. Celtic announced that their star striker, Leigh Griffiths, is to take an extended period of leave from football to help him deal with personal issues widely reported to be connected to gambling. The bitter irony here is that Celtic, in common with other major UK football clubs, have a multimillion-pound sponsorship deal with a major gambling firm.

Celtic trade on being “a club like no other”, an acknowledgment of their founding principles of helping the dispossessed Irish who settled in Glasgow at the end of the 19th century. Until Celtic divest themselves of all financial support from firms that prey on the descendants of these people, they stand accused of willingly exposing the most vulnerable supporters – and players – to the jaws of this beast.

Don’t expect this to change in the near future. There are more Tories on Celtic’s board than on the 1922 committee, which is why, after years of refusing to give their lowest-paid employees the living wage, they finally succumbed – but only in exchange for those same workers sacrificing their annual bonuses. A club like no other in their dreams.