Gambling news from http://www.lexpress.mu/
There is a saying that goes: “In a bet there is a fool and a thief.” And some ‘fools’ to bet on anything that the ‘thief’ offers. During the World Cup, punters could win and lose astronomical sums of money by predicting the number of yellow cards issued during the tournament. Other ‘fools’ could gamble on the number of players who would remove their jerseys after scoring a goal. For the ‘thief’, this tournament has been a blessing, as all the favourites won their games, and any notion of romanticism was sent packing with the defeats of Ghana and Australia in the first stage of the knockout games. The rest of the tournament became a matter of football expediency, set alight only by the genius of Zidane.
But the action on the football pitch was matched as fervently in the living rooms of gamblers, who took to the Web to place their bets. According to the Irish Independent, the country’s biggest selling newspaper, Irish punters staked €40 million online during the World Cup. Paddy Power, the country’s biggest bookmaker made a cool €20 million from the frenzy generated by the tournament. The boom has been fuelled by betting-in running or live betting, which allows people to place bets while the game is ongoing. This new form of betting was not available during the last tournament, but it has increased the opportunities for punters on an individual game.
The other form of betting, which is making a killing for both the bookies and the punters, is spread betting, where the gambler can expect to earn more than a quarter of a million pounds in one sitting. The concept is simple. The more right the punter is in his prognostics the more money he/she wins. But the more wrong he/she is, the more the wallet will take a whack. During the World Cup, a bookmaker said that there would be 270 yellow cards. Thus, people would bet either side of this probability. If yellow flashes more than 270 times at the tournament, the punter wins more money for each number of card shown. Equally if the bet is placed below the bookmaker’s forecast, say at 250, the punter then loses money on the difference and for every extra card distributed.
The appeal of spread betting is the vast amounts of money that can be won. But as gamblers usually show a level of optimism far superior to the rest of society, they often fail to see that they can also lose huge sums. The betting industry in Britain is expected to make over a billion pounds from the World Cup, surpassing its own estimates. Sporting index, a UK gambling company has reported a turnover of £12 million, a 60% increase over its World Cup 2002 turnover.
All would be well if gambling was not a serious problem. We learnt of English football genius Wayne Rooney’s £700 000 gambling debts with a mere shrug of a shoulder, given his multimillion revenue from the sport. However, for the less fortunate, those on more normal salaries, gambling can be a matter of grave concern, on a par with alcoholism.
This is according to Gamblers Anonymous, whose association exist in numerous countries around Europe. In Ireland, the association holds meetings in over 30 locations, while in Dublin they take place every day of the week. The association describes compulsive gambling as a disease “progressive in its nature, which can never be cured, but can be arrested”.
Gambling is in fact a grave social phenomenon and, like alcoholism, it affects those closest to the gambler. But it is also a huge industry and can thus pull strings in the corridors of power. It does not only affect affluent societies. In Mauritius, where the economy is now described as precarious, betting on horses is an industry officially worth over two billion rupees. Unlike alcoholism or tobacco smoking, where the government usually intervenes in the lives of people to reduce harm, it has failed to do so with gambling. In fact, in England, the New Labour government has plans to allow Las Vegas style super-casinos to establish themselves despite heavy criticism. However, the Internet has also helped the gaming industry and there control is more difficult. Online betting in Ireland rakes in over €800 million every year, and it is an area set to grow.
Addiction to gambling also displays a relationship to the proximity of casinos. Research in America shows that, in states where gambling is legal, there are more Gambling Anonymous chapters than in states which operate a ban. However, Internet sites have found a way to circumvent these bans, when they set themselves up offshore to operate. Some countries also allow businesses to set up for a small sum of money. In Costa Rica, where many gambling sites operate, they can set up for $10 000. This is a tiny sum, compared to the huge profits that they can make from their regular visitors.
The problem is to recognise gambling as a serious problem first, a step that governments and societies alike have tacitly failed to do. Though it is seen as immoral at some levels, especially in religious literature, this misses the point. Gambling causes social disruption, on a par with the effects of alcohol, and it should be recognised as such. However, until now, governments have shown little willingness to tackle the problem.
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