There is barely an ad break during a sports show on either BT or Sky that doesn’t include a betting company. Each advertisement is prefaced by the need to “bet responsibly”, which is another way of saying “don’t lose too much money”. Bookmakers in particular operate to the “bet responsibly” tag by having in their premises slot machines where gamblers can lose large sums of money very quickly. That’s responsibility for you.
Ladbroke’s run a classic ad at the moment, which features a cheery group of middle class young men, smiling their way to the bookies. “They are,” says the voice, “the have a go heroes!” They’re the what?
There is nothing heroic about gambling because more than likely you will lose. The odds are always against the gambler because that is why there is no such thing as a poor bookmaker. That there are more and more gambling companies flogging their wares and sponsoring various sports suggests there is money to be made.
I do have a bit of an issue with the spreading influence of gambling companies. Sport was forced to stop cigarette companies sponsoring their events because, it turned out, smoking was not exactly compatible with good health and fitness. Although gambling doesn’t cause cancer, there are precious few health or financial benefits to it.
Presenting gamblers as “have a go heroes” is a travesty in terms of the pernicious consequences of extreme gambling and the implication is there that if you don’t fancy a bet, you are not a hero. The screen gamblers never look the ones I see in bookmaker shops, huddling over tables, spending hour upon hour trying to beat the system which is naturally biased against them. I am not trying to sound classist here, but the gamblers are anything but the smartly dressed, fresh-faced twenty-somethings swinging jauntily along the road.
To many, gambling is an illness. I know plenty of people who gamble what I consider to be large sums of money on various sports and activities and they only ever tell you how the bet went when they win, which is why you don’t hear from them that often. No one really wants to meet their mates over a cheery pint, announcing they have contrived to lose £50 on that cert at Haydock. It just doesn’t happen. But win a few hundred quid on the football and the world knows about it.
I have lost track of the number of companies and the myriad of sponsored events, but I don’t like it. I suppose if you regularly lose relatively modest sums you call it betting responsibly but it doesn’t make a great deal of sense to me!
