Liverpool City Council Ban FOBTs In Betting Shops

[flyingscot]

I've just done a quick calculation in my head and I think there are 21 bookmakers in Paisley. 21.

Not surprised. There are 3 next door to each other on Gilmour Street right in the middle of the town. There were 2 William Hills really close- one was next to Bar Point and near Woodside Crematorium.

[Tom McB]

There's a really good Dispatches documentary on it here: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/videos/all/britains-high-street-gamble.

The interesting side of it is that the gambling industry claim that they don't put bookies in areas of multiple social deprivation. There is one bookie in David Cameron's home town, tucked up a side alley. There are streets in towns with eleven or twelve bookies within a two-minute walk of each other.

Why bring in Dave? Was the legislation not brought in under Liebour?

[fanny paddery]

A bit OTT - people can bet on what they chose to - its their money after all

Correct, but you wouldn't advertise heroin on tv. Same problem for some!

[Gaz]

Why bring in Dave? Was the legislation not brought in under Liebour?

I acknowledge in my post that it is a series of successive governments who have led us to this.

I didn't bring in Dave, the programme did.

[Cardinal Richelieu]

While I don't believe for one second that they should be banned, the amount you can gamble should certainly be limited to a similar level as those found in puggies in pubs (i.e. £2 max stake.. £70 max win). Imagine the state of some of the high streets, e.g. in Paisley, if FOBTs were banned completely and all the bookies shut down. It would be like a ghost town.

It's true that people can bet silly money online / through their smart phones. However, I would argue that they are slightly less addictive because there are barriers to jump through before you can gamble (e.g. registration, entering bank details). It is also a lot easier and less embarrassing to bar yourself from an online casino than it is from a bookies (and as some people have said, sometimes the bookies just don't notice / care).

[ayrmad]

While I don't believe for one second that they should be banned, the amount you can gamble should certainly be limited to a similar level as those found in puggies in pubs (i.e. £2 max stake.. £70 max win). Imagine the state of some of the high streets, e.g. in Paisley, if FOBTs were banned completely and all the bookies shut down. It would be like a ghost town.

It's true that people can bet silly money online / through their smart phones. However, I would argue that they are slightly less addictive because there are barriers to jump through before you can gamble (e.g. registration, entering bank details). It is also a lot easier and less embarrassing to bar yourself from an online casino than it is from a bookies (and as some people have said, sometimes the bookies just don't notice / care).

That will close plenty.

[FlyerTon]

Pawnbrokers, bookies, payday loan shops...the hight street is in decline. The rise of the Internet from the mid 1990's onwards, and therefore much more online shopping, together with aircraft hangar sized supermarkets (now selling many more items than in the past) is the main reason I think.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/decline-of-scottish-town-centres-bookies-1114294

[Gaz]

While I don't believe for one second that they should be banned, the amount you can gamble should certainly be limited to a similar level as those found in puggies in pubs (i.e. £2 max stake.. £70 max win). Imagine the state of some of the high streets, e.g. in Paisley, if FOBTs were banned completely and all the bookies shut down. It would be like a ghost town.

It's true that people can bet silly money online / through their smart phones. However, I would argue that they are slightly less addictive because there are barriers to jump through before you can gamble (e.g. registration, entering bank details). It is also a lot easier and less embarrassing to bar yourself from an online casino than it is from a bookies (and as some people have said, sometimes the bookies just don't notice / care).

I'm usually not in favour of things being banned (I would advocate the legalisation and regulation of drugs, for example) but this is one exception. Perhaps I'm clouded because a close family member was addicted to them, I've acknowledged that in the past.

What I would take issue with is your comment re: ghost towns if they shut down. I'm not sure high streets full of bookies, pawnbrokers and moneylenders is a good thing at all, to be honest. Perhaps if FOBTs were banned more money would be put into the local economy (I accept that many would just find something else to gamble on, but perhaps it would encourage more people to stop).

[Cardinal Richelieu]

That will close plenty.

Only if the shop stops making money. And would they? Hard to say obviously. I doubt many people who currently play them (whether addicted or not) would stop playing them. But obviously the amount of money they could lose would be dramatically cut.

When they first came out some 10 years ago, I think you could win £10k out of them (perhaps even more) and there was no limit on highest stake. There was no waiting period between spins (they even had a "quick spin" option where you could press the button and get the number instantly without having to watch the animation of a roulette wheel). The government then stepped in and slashed the max stake / win, as well as enforcing a set period between bets. And that did nothing to stem to proliferation of bookies, nor the number of addicts.

[Cardinal Richelieu]

I'm usually not in favour of things being banned (I would advocate the legalisation and regulation of drugs, for example) but this is one exception. Perhaps I'm clouded because a close family member was addicted to them, I've acknowledged that in the past.

What I would take issue with is your comment re: ghost towns if they shut down. I'm not sure high streets full of bookies, pawnbrokers and moneylenders is a good thing at all, to be honest. Perhaps if FOBTs were banned more money would be put into the local economy (I accept that many would just find something else to gamble on, but perhaps it would encourage more people to stop).

I agree that the local high street with its Scooby-Doo-esque "bookies, pawn shop, bookies, Greggs, bookies, moneylenders, bookies" array of shops is not desirable. But people will always gamble, and it's preferable they do it in a controlled and regulated environment (like you, I would advocate the same for drugs).

[ayrmad]

Only if the shop stops making money. And would they? Hard to say obviously. I doubt many people who currently play them (whether addicted or not) would stop playing them. But obviously the amount of money they could lose would be dramatically cut.

When they first came out some 10 years ago, I think you could win £10k out of them (perhaps even more) and there was no limit on highest stake. There was no waiting period between spins (they even had a "quick spin" option where you could press the button and get the number instantly without having to watch the animation of a roulette wheel). The government then stepped in and slashed the max stake / win, as well as enforcing a set period between bets. And that did nothing to stem to proliferation of bookies, nor the number of addicts.

I would imagine the number of spins at over £100 a pop would have been very very small, the number of spins between £2 and £100 will be quite a large number.

[ayrmad]

Imagine a brewer finding a brew that was highly addictive, because people aren't turning up at A&E or making an arse of themselves in public doesn't mean something isn't wreaking havoc behind the scenes.

[Loki]

I used to work in a William Hill where they were lucky to get 40 sports bets a day. Most of those bets were from one person that used to come in in the morning and place 50p bets on horses and dogs and he would leave about 4pm. The actual turn over from sports betting was sometimes not even £100 a day. It picked up on a Saturday when people came in to do football coupons. However the FOBTs were constantly used and they were generating around £2k a week. Considering how relatively quiet our shop was you could see that the only reason the shop was opened was to place these machines in.

We had two big customers that would regularly come in. A father, mother and son that would spunk a few hundred each time they were in, and a young "professional" that always had a stack of cash to fire into these machines. What he lost was incredible. I gave out gambling awareness literature to the family of three, but I got chastised by my manager as they were one of our best customers. The other person was a drug dealer coming in to launder money.

We as a shop were offered incentives to get more people to use the FOBTs. Competitions were run with money and vouchers up for grabs for increasing your shops revenue on these machines. New games were constantly added and we had to sell these games to the customers. I never used to bother. Basically they were trying to target customers that bet a lot on sports because if they could convert them to FOBT's they would make more money.

The percentage of profit on sports revenue is typically the over round which in a shop like William hill was 14%. Obviously this can swing wildly depending on the luck of your customers, but they are looking to make the over round. In a FOBT they have a 92% pay out rate which is higher than just about any puggie. However most of these pay outs are lowball and get played through by the customer. In my experience the pay out rate was generally less than 50%, but again the bookies will state that it's not their fault Timmy gambled all his winnings.

The problem with these machines it is easy to win a lot of money quickly, and it is very easy to lose the same amount of money. If someone has won a lot and carried on gambling and lost the amount they go on tilt, and chase those losses. Looking to make the money back they have lost.

With the Universal Credit system coming in to play now where individuals will be paid their benefit, housing benefit etc in one payment and then be asked to pay for rent etc themselves I think we will see a lot more problems occurring. Limiting the maximum bet is a step in the right direction.

[Mo Wonderboy]

The profit from sports betting looks ridiculously low, have you any evidence for that?

I'm almost 100% certain that the Sportsbook profits are for in shop only. Nobody these days would try and get a lumpy bet on in store.

[mid-table]

MT, that part about FOBTS not allowing near-misses, are you absolutely certain of that? I used to play a game called Rainbow Riches occasionally and I'm pretty sure it had near-misses programmed in.

I'm pretty certain of it, these days anyway. Pre Gambling Act 2005 I would not have said so. There is always the near-misses that statistically would have occurred anyway. The psychology of it makes the near-misses more memorable than the other run of the mill spins, if you did an analysis of the spins you would find that the sequencing of the reels was pretty much in line with expectation. What is done however, and Rainbow Riches is a good example, is that the jackpot symbol is bigger and is much more prominent than any of the other symbols.

Regardless of my dislike of these machines, I will say this about them; they are not rigged. There are all sorts of conspiracy theories on the internet, for example it is a pseudorandom number generator not a random number generator used in roulette, or that the random number generator picks a number between 0 and 42 instead of 0 and 36, and if the number is higher than 36 you are automatically given a loser. This is all garbage, they are truly random, they are audited, the ROI would be in line with expectations. I actually think you can see the results of the audits from links hidden away on certain betting companies websites.

The profit from sports betting looks ridiculously low, have you any evidence for that?

William Hill accounts 2007. It's 6 years out of date, and internet gambling was not as widespread as it is now. In addition the full effects of the Gambling Act 2005 had yet to start, tv advertising hadn't even started. William Hill website was poor back in 2007, it was only when it was redesigned in around 2009 that they put a real investment into online gaming. Football betting has evolved much more in the last 6 years, in 2007 the both teams to score coupon, which is now the 2nd highest grossing football coupon, hadn't even been invented.

So I would agree that in 2013 the sports betting profit will be higher than £26M, but equally the FOBT profit will also be higher than £201M.

The BBC article on the Liverpool vote states the following;

According to the Gambling Commission there, are 33,284 FOBTs across the UK

The average weekly profit per FOBT in 2012 was £825, up from £760 in 2011, according to the Gambling Commission

Quick bit of maths, 33,284 machines x £825 per week x 52 weeks per year = annual industry profit of £1,427,883,600. That's £1.4 billion of customer losses, not turnover, losses.

[vikingTON]

Fairer Gambling = Not to be listened to. Has 'a dog in the race'. Select Commitee = Can legitimately disregard the facts presented in said report. But oh wait...

'Fairer Gambling' did not set out the 'facts' in its report - nor did your post - their claims have been challenged by other sources in the same field, without being successfully rebutted. One source naturally being the bookmakers themselves, a far more credible voice of dissent coming from the parliamentary select committee. This does not mean that the latter automatically possesses the 'correct' facts on the issue: as it stands neither has used evidence to conclusively demonstrate their point. Which is the best available benchmark for determining a 'fact'.

So you've cited a report as being factual when it contains no such 'facts' and is in direct conflict with several other interests on the same issue. Better luck next time.

[Lambie's Pigeon Feed]

Loki's post above sums up why strict regulation is needed. Bookies, especially nationwide bookies, have no interest in the consequences of effectively bankrupting someone.

At the shareholders AGM they are there to maximise profits, indeed they are obliged to maximise their profits. They will pay the minimum lip service possible to helping their customers/victims.

A more practical (and probably legal) option would be to severely limit the stakes per spin. You can still have big stake gaming in casinos but for the benefit of society it should be removed from high streets.

[parsforlife]

Would making these machines payout winnings automatically help? Rather than it just being a number on the screen? I think it may help (tho far from stop) people from blowing any winnings they get.

it would be interesting to see how often winnings are re-gambled from these machines compared to (in-shop)sports betting. Similarly for online gambling

[Cardinal Richelieu]

Would making these machines payout winnings automatically help? Rather than it just being a number on the screen? I think it may help (tho far from stop) people from blowing any winnings they get.

it would be interesting to see how often winnings are re-gambled from these machines compared to (in-shop)sports betting. Similarly for online gambling

Not really workable, unless you revert back to having them pay out coins. Otherwise they'd be back and forward to the payout desk every two seconds.

[lodmoorhill]

Clearly, if you're going to ban something to "protect people from themselves", then Liverpool council should be banning all alcohol sales.

And if were going down that road, what's next?

Smoking? Extreme sports? Scaffolding?

Seems a strange world when someone is banned from betting a fiver on a machine, yet can legally become addicted to alcohol, lose their job, destroy their family, wreck their liver and become a burden to the taxpayer.

Anyway, enough of this, I'm of to put my coupon on and have a pint.