-LBC radio - FOBT - gambling addiction now

hardest to spot

lost his family  25 years ago

borrowed 20k

just paid it back now

Greg

Sunderland

a pro FOBT player

says he make £100 to 1k a day

You mean James O'Brexit of the far left?

Surely he's in the pay of the EU.
Every day when I'm a tad slow to turn him off after the LBC news he's into an attack on Brexit.

If he likes the EU so much then why doesn't he go and live there?

Even the BBC gave him the boot for bias.

Of course his anti-Brexit stance on LBC is also an act to create controversy which is what call in shows are all about.

He probably voted for Brexit himself if the truth's known.

James O'Brexit is no stranger to misinformation anxious.

He is of the far-left, which is why the BBC sacked him.

He tries to cover it up, but it's there all right.

Stumped for words again anxious? You're not the sharpest tool in the box are you.

Mind you some people are locked into paranoid fantasy worlds

I've never actually seen one.

nick - has been a topic of interest to me down the years. Think there's a real disconnect in forcing people to only play £2 on a terminal in a shop but can get their phones out their pockets and blow hundreds.

Shops can refuse to serve if you're drunk, in a bad emotional state or are begging for money for one more spin. But online there's no visibility and you could be snorting coke off a hooker's hooters while playing online and they'd be none the wiser.

There's always been talk that the campaign's intentions haven't always been transparent. The guy behind it was a game manufacturer who fell out with bookies. The accusation is that this is more of a vendetta rather than a real desire for fairness and justice. You'd have to look up his submissions to the GC etc and decide for yourself on that.


That said, I think they're odious machines. There is clearly an element in them that encourages you to have one more go. I think they are specifically targeted at inexperienced gamblers and foreigners who have no interest trying to decipher form. And I think the regulator could have got hold of this much earlier and have been left chasing as the campaign got round them and straight into Parliament, forcing them to play catch up.

online, they can smash up there own houses , as oppose to the shops

Fobt is extremely addictive
Citation please.
The reason why I'm calling this out is that the Gambling Commission iirc actually try and measure the addictiveness of different types of play, and guess what?
Exchange betting is more addictive than FOBTs. And exchange betting is usually done at home.

I was one of the first bookies to take these machines in my shop. At this time I met the developers of the machines too and discussed the way they were designed. This was before the existence of the (thoroughly useless) Gambling Commission.
There was no roulette content, stakes were unlimited and payouts could be as much as £50,000.
But they were quite slow burners. Punters treated them like slot machines and bookies didn't like players to spend all day playing 5 or 10p a go on whatever game they were playing, mostly because there was a turnover tax on betting back then and FOBTs were considered -and still are - as being bets on outside (ie not events from within the machine itself) events.

Then came roulette and the Gambling Commission and a disgraceful consultation and some legislation regarding staking, because some casinos were complaining that betting shops weren't supposed to be for 'Hard' gambling, casinos were.

The subsequent changes were absolutely perfect for the big bookies and I still believe they were the only ones consulted by the GC, who wouldn't have understood the ramifications of the new set-up, which was, as it is now. £100 maximum stake, £500 maximum payout. And (an ideal number really) of 4 machines max per shop.
A maximum win to maximum stake of just 4/1!!!!

Around and just before this came the changes to Horse racing mostly set up by Peter Savile, iirc, who managed to overprice the sport and distance the papers, TV, radio (they used to give the results out all day if you remember), and others. As a result of this the cost to, especially smaller, bookies for SIS became almost prohibitive. SO more reliance on the FOBTs ensued. Again, because they got a much better rental deal than independents, the more or less guaranteed income was better for them than risky old expensive horse racing.

Now the marketing people took over and decided that the optimum rate at getting betting opportunities to punters was 1 a minute, so now there was rapido, virtual racing, 49's, about 7 live dog meetings a day, evening racing.

In most shops this made very little, BUT, it persuaded the GC that the shops needed to be open from 8.30am to 9.30pm, or even longer in some places.
This meant more time for people to play the FOBTs.

As it slowly became apparent that these things, especially roulette, were extremely addictive. And I can attest to this, because even though I know how they work, how they pay, what they cost and everything else about them, I got hooked too.

1 mate of mine committed suicide and another nearly did but was found in time.
There were regular punters, I saw old blokes who might previously have put on a 10p lucky 15 now pumping £10 notes into games of chance they didn't even understand, such is the pull of these things. Losing their pensions, savings and mortgage money.

The public outcry and label of "crack cocaine of gambling" brought about some COMPULSORY (if you anted to keep your GC licence) money to gambling charities - all based in the west end of London and proportionally far cheaper to the biggest bookies - like the GC licence itself, by the way. And then the keep it FUN campaign and setting limits facility on the machines themselves. All of which were and are totally ignored by the players but kept the media and unfriendly politicians at bay. The government stepped in by placing a 25% tax on all machine profits. This didn't affect the punters in any way.

As a bookie in a different part of the country, some years later I took a couple of the machines on again.
As time went on, some of the things I witnessed people doing, hurt. So I became the one vocal bookie (there were a few others but they were less public) who helped the campaign to lower the stakes. It got me in papers, on the radio and TV and strangely, some unfavourable interest from the GC. And problems with the machine suppliers.

All the time less and less betting being done over the counter in betting shops all over the country, the big firms have loads of incentives to either get people on the machines, or at least onto their online and offshore casino apps and sites.

The GC gives out lectures and advice on how to deal with money laundering, yet these things are probably the best and most common way there is to do it, and the bookies all know it but, to be fair cannot easily implement the GC advice, in much the same way that telling someone they've done enough and should leave it now when they just blew the mortgage money and have £20 left is very likely to result in a right hook.

I watched a punter, nice bloke, single dad, who just got a first month's pay cheque from a job he was so excited to have got, play some roulette He was saying he had his kid's school money and some shopping money and rent and stuff, and a £100 or so left over.
He lost the hundred, then another £400 trying to get it back then the rest of it (he must have had an idea he might need it because he'd drawn all his wage out of the bank),
Then the rest.
Now he's panicking, "what am I gonna do? I need at least £400".
He called his mum, she lent him £400. Inside 30 minutes of his return to the shop, he lost that too.
He asked me if he could borrow my computer - wanted to get a payday loan £500. I said yes but he was to leave the shop and not come back because I'd turn the machines of if he tried to play them.
He successfully got his loan. Took it to Baldfreds and lost it there.

Another bloke, never seen him before, came in played for 20 minutes, lost about £200, went to the cashpoint got another £200. 10 minutes later that was gone.
He left. 1/2 an hour later he was marched in by his wife and made to fill in self-exclusion forms by her. She was angry, very angry. Screaming at him about the £100 he'd lost.
She said he'd poured a full bottle of milk down the sink and said there's no milk and gone out for some... mine was the nearest betting shop he wasn't self-excluded from.
For all his embarrassment and loss of face, dignity and money, he still could tell her he'd lost £400 and not £100.

Some people have won, but it has just made them play for bigger stakes, so they lose more and more quickly as time goes on.

I firmly believe that the loss of these machines a few years ago might have saved independent bookmakers from virtual extinction, that their demise will just see money return over the counter. Bookies take about 1/4 to 1/3 of the bets over the counter that they used to, and because there are no longer actual bookies working in their shops, just cashiers on cashiers wages, there is not much understanding of gambling, bets, odds or any of the stuff that made the industry what it once was. But for all this, people still like a bet, and there will be an increase of OTC activity and the companies who rent these evil machines out will no longer benefit from them.

Maybe betting shops will return to communities and off the high streets where they never used to be much anyway.

The one thing that separates the FOBTs from online is CASH. For some people, there's no money in the bank or on credit cards etc, so if they get some cash they're on the FOBTs. Another good reason to get rid of them.

There is, believe it or not, a good deal more I could have written here, but you get the gist.

The Gambling commission, who were invented and brought in to police an industry that was very well self-policed, that goes for betting shops AND casinos, have actually been a major factor in the demise of what we all had.
There were, and always will be, problem gamblers, but the betting industry was in the main an honourable one. The complete takeover by ex-marketing and business studies students, coupled with only very big organisations who don't understand the business they're in have collaborated to ensure a healthy wage for themselves and a few pals, bog all for most of the staff and no real way to bet as we knew it.
Selling off the tote was a bad move too.

A majority of old school gamblers simply don't understand or have the time or patience to use BF and don't realise the rip-off special offers and poor service they are now subjected to.

On-course is just as bad, imo. I have worked with bookies on course and have been to some of the biggest meetings, as well as some very small ones, on many race courses.
The focus is on after racing entertainment and selling beer and concessions, yet the cost to be there and all the other exes means that the traditional bookies will inevitably become replaced by more marketing and computer driven betting. Short-sighted of the race courses, but then again even these are just owned by big companies for whom the racing isn't the most important thing. There may even be more racecourse closures or tote-only betting.

The whole thing will never again what we all knew and it emanates from FOBTs and the GC. If these 2 were gone and racing priced itself a bit lower as a product, we might see something better round the corner.

It's been a very long time since independents had limits like that.
Mind you, they needed them at the time because of all the big fiddles that were going on.
Dagenham dogs, forecast trebles, and others. Bookies weren't legalised until 1961 and were seen as shady for at least the 1st 10 years.
Most of the cheating had been stopped by the time the big firms took hold.
The big bookies have rarely taken on high rollers to the same extent that smaller firms do.
They certainly don't now. They even stopped hedging about 15 years ago.

The problem with the Tote was the management.
McCririck exposed them with the F/c scandal.

I seem to remember that in the beginning the Tote shops didn't take greyhound bets, is that right?
Did they have any other restrictions?

SF doesn't have that problem so he maybe remembers

Fobt is extremely addictive
Citation please.
The reason why I'm calling this out is that the Gambling Commission iirc actually try and measure the addictiveness of different types of play, and guess what?
Exchange betting is more addictive than FOBTs. And exchange betting is usually done at home.


Bongo - fraid I'd have to ask for a citation that the GC did a study and found it wasn't more addictive. From what I know, that's something the GC have been at pains not to discover. They use regular studies on gambling activity that have found that the rate of addiction has remained pretty stable and that addicts have tended to use several different products, but I don't think they've ever looked into products to determine if one was more addictive than another.

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