What other industry openly discouranges its customers from using its product?

Great point there, something I've thought many times in recent years about the gambling industry.

Even though pubs might have warnings (drinkaware) you would only very rarely stop serving anyone, and that is about a potentially harmful drug!

I think the earlier point about 'natural selection' and examples like Blockbuster are also spot on - if the service that a physical bookies provides ceases to be of any use at all (apart from machine addiction) then they will, and probably should, die off naturally.

So, why are they threatening to close the physical bookies, which is where they house their 'addiction machines'.

Surely, that's the only earnings (mostly) they are taking these days....

I think it's because people are either getting sick of the machines, or simply going so busto they can't play them anymore in some cases. It has eaten itself basically. There's only a limited pool they could exploit between them also. And most of those people are brassic.

The bookies have been sucking out the blood that has made the high street shops viable ie horseracing, football, etc. Then fobt was introduced, and given the top slot because of its lesser overheads and assured and easy profit streams gradually but surely to the exclusion of the other once behemoth betting products eg horseracing and football.

But, the stench emanating from fobt is repugnant, lingering and indefensible by bookies in public and their paid advisors (MPs) in Parliament. Even social services, medics, legal establishments and society in general have been affected, a situation the bookies have never anticipated or encountered with any of their other products.

Fobt has become toxic, and not acceptable on the high street. The "chicken" has come back to roost!