The fierce competition focused on protection of self-interests between sportsbooks, pubs and slot halls negates the reforms aimed to help the player to fight with gambling addiction. In other words, the competition of bookmakers negates all the efforts put in to help addicted people.
Experts on the problems of gambling industry are critical to speak about the competition of representatives of betting industry, accusing them in being ‘selfish’ in their oral war in conditions of tougher regulation.
The leading charity fund of Great Britain also warned that narrow focus on controversial betting terminals for betting with fixed chances and ignoring of online betting, slots in pubs and casinos can cause the negative effect among addicted players.
The government prepares for analyzing the segment of slots, that, in turn, causes fear that it might lead to bigger restrictions on bookmakers terminals and decrease of profit.
The researchers suspect galleries of gaming slots and casinos in hypocrisy towards bookmakers because of their accusations towards betting terminals for betting with fixed chances, which make more than half bookmakers’ profit, which reaches 1,7 billion pounds last year.
Those terminals were announced “gambling cocaine” – the phrase Donald Trump invented while managing the casino – he called video bingo that, while it was hurting his business.
The Association of British Bookmakers has recently responded to the criticism of gambling terminals with fixed chances based on the research published by the Gambling committee.
Based on the real data, the committee reports that “there is no real proof of what kinds of gambling activities lead to addiction”.
The Association also showed indicators that prove that average players lose more money and spend more time while playing entertaining arcade games.
CEO of the association warned about the danger of gambling facilities for under aged and stated that other facilities don’t pay too much attention to the analytics. The industry of arcade games and some elements of casino industry, who are financial competitors of bookmakers unfairly used betting terminals for betting with fixed chances as a scapegoat while describing addiction problems in gambling industry.
In truth, the arcade games segment has more equipments and has to be more responsible in its approach to help the players with addiction.
GambleAware CEO Marc Etches claims that this quarrel between competitive companies says that they lost the feeling to give help to those who suffer from gambling addiction.
He noticed that there are many people who have problems so companies have to make more detailed discussions. Narrow thinking which is limited only with competition between companies doesn’t lead to mature and fact based discussions.
One of the biggest researches conducted by the research group NatCen was meant to track the activity bank cards of regular sportsbook clients in order to see whether their behavior changes in time and try to figure out whether it is a coincidence that terminal with fixed chances usage causes addiction.
They found connection between using bookmaker terminals and inclination to gambling addiction and at the same time discovered that the biggest risk is for unemployed and ethnicity minorities representatives.
Head of the research group in MatCen, Heather Wardl claims this “shows some sort of connection, however we’re unable to say what causes it. Looks like there are people for whom playing on slots might lead to the problems. There are also people who have addiction in any gambling segment”.
She also pointed that the researches about arcade games, gaming slots and online betting weren’t made so it is hard to compare the risks of addiction. Groups which represent their interests spend huge efforts to put down other activities in comparison with theirs and that hurts everyone. In the end, it results in mutual accusations with no truth in what really causes harm to people. Heather Wardl also claimed that she realizes why different companies make it and that it has no positive effect. They should have joined efforts to study how to help people stop bad problems they face.
