I was going to make some kind of comment on how many gambling ministers we’ve been through to get this far but that involved Googling them and knowing all their names. Some aren’t even household names in their own household. You’d have more chance of naming the last ten Chelsea managers.

We have had three prime ministers in the two years and four months which this process has dragged on for and we’ve had predictions that this day was imminent for over a year.

The major gambling operators will tell you they are delighted that they can finally have some clarity as they need to have certainty to plan their businesses and this morning their share prices have all gone up for that reason.

Begrudgingly, as punters, we have to be happy about that, because throughout this debate the normal people who just like a bet on the horses every day, a football coupon on a Saturday or a bet on the golf every week have suddenly been asked to worry about how multinational corporations worth billions are doing.

Everyday punters left out of conversation

The issue punters have had throughout this process is that the debate has always been presented as being between two sides, the major operators and the gambling reformers, and while some might naturally choose to sympathise with people who genuinely believe that current gambling legislation was passed before we had smart phones, that the operators have at times failed in protecting vulnerable people in the past and that keeping these massive companies on a tighter lead might be a good thing, sadly that involves siding with plenty of people who simply don’t want gambling to exist at all.

For a lot of the last 28 months it’s felt like the less than 1% of gamblers, which might be a good guess of the number who have problems with gambling, are the only ones that matter, and that nobody has cared about the normal, everyday people who enjoy a bet, like to study the form, follow a sport, think about the outcome and be rewarded if they win. Most of those people will lose in any given year, and many of them will think of the price of their hobby in the same way they might think about the price they pay to go to the cinema or subscribe to Netflix.

Until today, all operators have been asked to make voluntary donations of 0.1% of net revenue and that money has gone to an organisation called GambleAware which was set up to give people information on gambling to make it safer, to pay for support and treatment for people suffering gambling harm, and to pay for research into gambling to help reduce harm.

The white paper proposes that there will now be a statutory levy which all operators must pay following further consultation. The Betting and Gaming Council, who represent the operators, have welcomed this and their members were already in agreement that the voluntary payments would go up even if this was never made compulsory. That’s good then – everyone thinks this is a good thing and we can all get on with moaning about something else. Not so fast…

The problems here are that the NHS has stated in the past that it would rather get its money from its Government budget rather than from GambleAware, as the victims of compulsive gamblers don’t like the idea of the bookmakers paying for their treatment.

The Government has never liked the idea of hypothecated taxes, where you tax people an amount to pay for one specific thing, and there are always arguments about how to best spend the NHS budget which might not rank gambling disorder treatment services as a high priority. The levy and the money that operators are fined will now all go into this large pot and if you thought the battle to get the white paper to appear today was messy then wait until you see what a bunch of organisations arguing over this money looks like.

Broadly speaking the debate will be over whether to take a “public health approach” to gambling and once you go down this road it never takes you too long to find someone who genuinely believes that all gambling should be banned and that the aim should always be a reduction in all gambling, not just a reduction in gambling harm.

Quality of evidence is key

In order to further their plans they need evidence. Politicians are often fond of saying that legislation should be based on evidence and the issue in gambling is that many of the studies that have been done, and the evidence that has been produced, show huge bias depending on who has funded it.

The Gambling Commission has spent £1.4m from licence fees since 2019 on a variety of research projects. It has also spent nearly £16m in voluntary monies, mostly from Entain, Flutter and bet365, in that time and where that money has all gone is anyone’s guess as they haven’t updated that part of their website for about a year. It’s an extremely safe bet that some of that money has gone to organisations who are openly anti-gambling.

Meanwhile, the Government has sent many millions from the NHS budget to multiple organisations like the Office of Health Improvement and Disparities and the National Institute for Health Research. Huge amounts have been spent on reviews and reports with universities getting large sums to carry out studies. That’s before you get into the many think tanks and consulting firms who seem to have large budgets to spend in this area.

Much like the whole debate around the White Paper, this one, over who funds research into gambling, breaks down into a straight fight between the large operators and people who believe that all gambling is inherently bad. As punters, yet again, we end up taking the side of our old enemy – the bookies.

The Department of Health and Social Care don’t really allow research that is commissioned by gambling operators and so they are bombarded by surveys, reports and papers, prepared by people who are anti-gambling, which are often statistically unsound or sometimes simply ridiculous. Many times the questions that are asked are designed to get an answer which was decided in advance and so many of the conclusions are hugely subjective.

People taking a public health approach to gambling will often describe it as “the new tobacco” but I take great issue with that description. While it’s undeniable that every cigarette you smoke has a detrimental effect on your health, whether you have the odd puff or are a 40-a-day person, gambling is a totally different product in that you are paying for an experience in the way you do when you take a holiday, go to the cinema, to a concert, or watch a football match. There is a cost and you don’t get a physical product for that cost.

While it’s true that for certain people gambling can lead to issues with addiction and be extremely damaging, for most people it’s a positive benefit in their life. I could easily do research that showed that if people switched their expenditure from cinema going, theatre going, concert going or attending football matches to buying stuff from shops in the high street then that would be better for the UK economy but that research would be deeply flawed as the benefits that people get from the pleasure these experiences can bring are so hard to quantify.

If the public health researchers fail to see gambling in that way then their conclusions will lean towards abolishing it.

A lot of people would say that this great pile of money that will now be coming in via the new levy should simply go on building treatment centres to support and treat people whose lives have been ruined by gambling. It feels like years ago that I read we were going to have 14 clinics but we seem to be still stuck on around six and that means that only the most extreme cases of compulsive behaviour can currently be dealt with.

Effectively this levy is a tax that bettors will pay, it has to come from somewhere and the companies may charge bettors by offering fewer concessions and tightening their margins. In the future we might reflect, while reading a poorly researched report with a scary headline and a dubious conclusion, that we paid for it by the removal of a sixth place in our Saturday handicap or the end of the 2-Up on our football bets.

I will confidently bet the odds-on that most of this massive influx of new money is spent in a way that isn’t very clear to the outside world, that much of it goes to consultants, think tanks and research institutes, and that it ends up producing work that is intended to kill off our hobby and our industry for good.

Gambling Review, White Paper: The Key Takeaways

• Frictionless checks at £125 net loss a month or £500 within a year
• Higher level spending check at £1000 net loss in 24 hours or £2000 in 90 days
• A review of the horserace betting levy
• New rules on bonuses such as free bets
• Consultation on advertising
• ‘BHA welcomes white paper’ – click here for full story

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Safer gambling

We are committed in our support of safer gambling. Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.

If you are concerned about your gambling, please call the National Gambling Helpline / GamCare on 0808 8020 133.

Further support and information can be found at begambleaware.org and gamblingtherapy.org