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24 Aug 23
19:10
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14 Jul 09
Dear reader,
You will no doubt have heard the gambling industry’s famous slogan, “When the fun stops: stop.” This has never seemed like a very good motto, even if it does manage to wheedle the word “fun” into a public health warning.
For one thing, it puts a full stop on pretty much every form of human activity. Nothing is ever unstoppably fun. Rolling inside a giant soap bubble down a mountainside made entirely from parmesan cheese while being served high end savoury canapés by a team of elite stand up comedians. Fine for a while, But it's probably going to start feeling a little awkward and forced after the first five hours or so.
Fun is a marketing tool. So when your key strapline involves stopping when it stops, then maybe this isn't about fun at all, but something more sinister. And perhaps it’s something the industry itself needs to take more responsibility for.
This is the best thing, in my opinion, about the Guardian's decision to stop taking gambling adverts. Sport has become such a politically charged entity that there is a tendency to “other side” every issue. Oh, so you think it’s bad to have a football club owned by a despotic monarchy known to dismember its political opponents: and yet you still wear leather shoes? Explain that.
By contrast this is not a grey issue, no matter how hard those who work in the industry might try to make it one. Aggressively marketed online gambling, always available, a constant gabbling soundtrack to every single sporting event: this is purely parasitic.
The Guardian recognises this, and is turning its back on a large source of income for the greater good. We were hoping you might consider that a good reason to support us today.
Gambling contributes nothing to the sporting spectacle beyond a demonstrable wider harm, from financial distress and mental health issues, to referred problems for those affected by gambling addiction in others. Gambling has been introduced by stealth as a key part of experiencing sport for a generation of young people, replacing, say, collecting football cards as a shared activity during a tournament summer (let us not pretend age restrictions have any effect: they don’t).
Support the Guardian
You can try to other-side this too. You can point to the money gambling pumps into sport, which doesn’t generally need it to survive. You can say, hey we’re all grown-ups. Maybe I like the odd punt, Mr Scold. It’s a free country. Which is true. But on the other hand I also like drinking, smoking and shooting guns. But it might be a bit weird to have these things marketed relentlessly by glamorous athletes at events attended by children under the age of ten.
There is a downside for the Guardian. Rejecting gambling advertising is not a commercial decision without consequences. It is literally saying no to easy money, opening up the question of how exactly we're going to replace that money while funding the continued operation of our popular news and sports website.
And so, having spent 600 words jibing at the gambling industry for taking money from impressionable people at the click of an online button, it falls to me to ask Guardian readers if they might consider helping to fill in the shortfall.
This is the other side of this message. If you think refusing gambling ads is a good position to take, or even if you don’t, but uphold our right to make it, then support our journalism today.
If you think our writers, reporters and livebloggers deserve to be properly funded – and not by gambling money – then here is a chance to show that too. It isn't much of a gamble. Support the Guardian and you get a guaranteed return on the same stream of award-winning sport-type content, not to mention occasional notes of grudgingly permissive fun.
And all of it marginally less annoying without the vast severed head of Ray Winstone urging you to get your acca sorted. If this seems like something worth doing, show your support today from just £2 a month. Keep reading even if you don't. And thanks for following this far.
Support us
Thank you,
Barney Ronay
Chief sports writer
You will no doubt have heard the gambling industry’s famous slogan, “When the fun stops: stop.” This has never seemed like a very good motto, even if it does manage to wheedle the word “fun” into a public health warning.
For one thing, it puts a full stop on pretty much every form of human activity. Nothing is ever unstoppably fun. Rolling inside a giant soap bubble down a mountainside made entirely from parmesan cheese while being served high end savoury canapés by a team of elite stand up comedians. Fine for a while, But it's probably going to start feeling a little awkward and forced after the first five hours or so.
Fun is a marketing tool. So when your key strapline involves stopping when it stops, then maybe this isn't about fun at all, but something more sinister. And perhaps it’s something the industry itself needs to take more responsibility for.
This is the best thing, in my opinion, about the Guardian's decision to stop taking gambling adverts. Sport has become such a politically charged entity that there is a tendency to “other side” every issue. Oh, so you think it’s bad to have a football club owned by a despotic monarchy known to dismember its political opponents: and yet you still wear leather shoes? Explain that.
By contrast this is not a grey issue, no matter how hard those who work in the industry might try to make it one. Aggressively marketed online gambling, always available, a constant gabbling soundtrack to every single sporting event: this is purely parasitic.
The Guardian recognises this, and is turning its back on a large source of income for the greater good. We were hoping you might consider that a good reason to support us today.
Gambling contributes nothing to the sporting spectacle beyond a demonstrable wider harm, from financial distress and mental health issues, to referred problems for those affected by gambling addiction in others. Gambling has been introduced by stealth as a key part of experiencing sport for a generation of young people, replacing, say, collecting football cards as a shared activity during a tournament summer (let us not pretend age restrictions have any effect: they don’t).
Support the Guardian
You can try to other-side this too. You can point to the money gambling pumps into sport, which doesn’t generally need it to survive. You can say, hey we’re all grown-ups. Maybe I like the odd punt, Mr Scold. It’s a free country. Which is true. But on the other hand I also like drinking, smoking and shooting guns. But it might be a bit weird to have these things marketed relentlessly by glamorous athletes at events attended by children under the age of ten.
There is a downside for the Guardian. Rejecting gambling advertising is not a commercial decision without consequences. It is literally saying no to easy money, opening up the question of how exactly we're going to replace that money while funding the continued operation of our popular news and sports website.
And so, having spent 600 words jibing at the gambling industry for taking money from impressionable people at the click of an online button, it falls to me to ask Guardian readers if they might consider helping to fill in the shortfall.
This is the other side of this message. If you think refusing gambling ads is a good position to take, or even if you don’t, but uphold our right to make it, then support our journalism today.
If you think our writers, reporters and livebloggers deserve to be properly funded – and not by gambling money – then here is a chance to show that too. It isn't much of a gamble. Support the Guardian and you get a guaranteed return on the same stream of award-winning sport-type content, not to mention occasional notes of grudgingly permissive fun.
And all of it marginally less annoying without the vast severed head of Ray Winstone urging you to get your acca sorted. If this seems like something worth doing, show your support today from just £2 a month. Keep reading even if you don't. And thanks for following this far.
Support us
Thank you,
Barney Ronay
Chief sports writer
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Replies: 21
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info@email.theguardian.com
Should anyone wish to reply. |
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Barney Ronay:
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Barney can go and do his begging somewhere else . Strange times.
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Screaming......surely that pic cant be for real , or can it ?
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I googled "labour haircut", and that's what I got.
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I find this amazing , I also doubt they get enormous amounts of easy money their words not mine. Maybe their readers can confirm if they have noticed huge amounts of Gambling Ads in their paper, to get HUGE amounts of easy money they must have HUGE amounts of Ads daily.
Its speaks about Gambling causing Mental Issues , yet their front page news is hardly what you could call funny..Its usually NEGATIVE with harrowing stories of Atrocities on a daily basis..Surely that is a more damaging reason than having a little flutter everyday for causing Mental Issues..I simply see it as a begging letter from a paper that KNOWS its going down the tubes... |
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you cant be surprised by the graunid nowadays. its become a parody of itself and katherine viner is the worst editor of all. the paper is no better than a student mag. its adopted evry modish position and is at the forefront of the trans debate and on the wrong side. no journo can dissent or they are gone, like hadley freeman
the advertising that keeps it afloat comes from the state and local govt. every public job goes there and nowhere else, with predictable result- councils are full of them even when confronted with real misogyny(the grauniads fave word,its everywhere), as exemplified with the religion of peace and love the grauniad is more concerned about islamophobia. ask one of their coumnists if a geezer having 5 wives and cutting off their feamle childrens giblets is acceptable and they will blow up. but it happens everywhere the religion of peace exists and they are silent about it. they wouldnt be if it happened in israel, its n1 pet hate gambling is perceived by them as evil corporations preying on the working class-another obsession despite the fact all its journos are incredibly posh. a guardian govt would tax it out of existence |
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On twitter at the moment one of their journalists,Rob Davies is having a pretty personal and rabidly anti gambling debate with the bar stewards,particularly Chris who really upset him with a perfectly innocent comment to the guy's picture's likeness to the Yorkshire Ripper...Oh for the days of Richard Baerlein and even Chris Cook...no betting like men allowed soon...more like woke p@nsies
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sparrrer will be along soon to explain all
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Message to Barnay, your mum wants her pudding bowl back.
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The Guardian have set their stall out. They detest racing and betting. They see both as being anachronistic and not aligned to their ‘progressive’ although very Leftish authoritarian mindset. It is just all too posh, white, and heterosexual for them and their wider metropolitan bubble. Turning it around, does racing and betting need The Guardian?
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Studying the form every day keeps the brain active, especially so when retired. All sorts of emotion involved with betting, many positive.
Just another lot who think they know best, in trying to control our behavior. Best ignored. |
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mitolo sums up the Guardian and it's readership very well.
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Well said Jumper45.
Agree entirely. |
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Sorry are we all meant to take that guy ( i think ) seriously
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If Barney is wearing the glasses, shirley it's a bint?
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Likewise your comments, barstool. Agree 100%.
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The ears are a bit small for a real bloke.
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I have no idea who the specimen in the glasses is. I've no idea what Ronay himself looks like, come to that. It's just how I imagine him from that supercilious, pearl-clutching, anti-gambling begging letter. And the fact he writes things for the Guardian.
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It is just all too posh, white, and heterosexual for them and their wider metropolitan bubble.
It's not any poshness in the participants which annoys these people when it comes to horse racing and gambling. The people who write for the Guardian are as posh as you can get, including Oxford-educated Ronay. Their problem with racing and gambling is that both of them attract people who are, quite frankly, common - the worst sin of all when you come from a Guardian sort of background. It didn't always used to be like this. Baerlein, Cook, Fremantle ... with writers like that you didn't give a stuff about what their background might be. You might have disagreed with them, but you knew that they loved racing and gambling, and, most of all, they respected the people who followed the game and enjoyed betting on it. Ronay, by contrast, can't contain his contempt: "Gambling contributes nothing to the sporting spectacle beyond a demonstrable wider harm ..." Ugh. Patronizing git. |