Express & Star

Fixed odds betting terminals: Could crackdown spell the end for bookies?

Gamblers across the Black Country and parts of Staffordshire lost a staggering £38.8 million on controversial fixed odds betting machines last year.

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Stricter regulations are planned for fixed odds betting terminals

Just spend a minute thinking about the magnitude of that figure. It could fund a large section of the West Midlands’ Metro extension, enable free parking at all of the region’s hospitals, or even pay for a couple more superstars to bolster Wolves title hopes.

According to the Campaign for Fairer Gambling (CFG), punters in the four Black Country boroughs have lost nearly £200m on the machines since 2008, taking into account the period following Labour’s decision to relax gambling laws.

Now its appears that time may finally be up for the betting terminals (FOTBs), which are regularly described as ‘the crack cocaine of gambling’ due to their highly addictive nature.

The machines – more than 700 of which are stationed in bookies across the region – simulate casino-style games such as roulette, allowing the customer to stake up to £100 every 20 seconds.

Under plans revealed this week following a review, ministers may limit stakes to £2 a spin, a measure the CFG has been demanding for years.

Bookmakers could also see advertising rules tightened, which could mean a clampdown on gambling firms advertising on football shirts.

Labour’s shadow culture minister Tom Watson has been at the forefront of the push for greater regulation of the gambling industry.

He described the Government’s plans as a ‘timid response’ and has called for immediate action to tackle the ‘hidden epidemic of gambling addiction in Britain’.

Tom Watson wants stakes reduced to £2

One man who learned the hard way about the potential to lose money is Simon Perfitt, from Dudley, who at the height of his gambling addiction lost £3,000 in a single lunch hour.

Before becoming hooked on FOBTs, Mr Perfitt drove a Porsche, lived in a plush flat, and held a string of highly paid jobs in the IT industry, affording him a lifestyle millions could only dream of. But after venturing into a betting shop for the first time at the age of 47, he quickly became hooked and lost everything.

“I would be taking longer and longer lunch breaks, because I needed more time to gamble, and when I was at work I was thinking about it all the time,” he said in an interview three years ago.

He spent about £200,000 over a 10-year-period as he poured every spare penny into the machines.

He stopped going on holiday or buying new clothes and shopped around for the cheapest food. Yet he was all too aware that he was never going to beat the system and get his money back. For him, feeding the habit was an end in itself.

Mr Perfitt eventually managed to kick the habit after getting in touch with the Gordon Moody Association, which offers intensive treatment programmes to help problem gamblers.

But no everyone is backing calls for stricter regulation. UKIP’s West Midlands Euro MP Bill Etheridge said he was ‘dead against’ the proposals, which he said would harm the bookmaking industry and take away people’s freedom of choice. The concept that someone will become addicted to gambling because they have seen the name of a bookies on a football shirt is particularly ridiculous,” said Mr Etheridge, who is also a Sedgley councillor.

“It shows a complete lack of understanding of the issue, and comes as a result of so many of our politicians being desperate to nanny us all.”

Simon Perfitt

Needless to say the betting industry is also against the proposals.

The Association of British Bookmakers (ABB) has long opposed cuts.

It says a £2 cap would cause 20,000 job losses, cut the 9,000-strong estate of high street betting shops by half, and lose the Government millions in tax revenue.

Meanwhile the Government’s own estimates suggest the minimum cap could lead to a £5.5bn loss in tax revenues over the next 10 years.

However, economist Howard Reed does not believe this will have a detrimental effect on the local economy. He says that reducing the amount of money people spend on gambling will lead to the money being spent in more productive sectors, and will actually lead to more, better paid jobs.

“Increases in spending on FOBTs are likely to destroy jobs in the UK economy rather than creating them,” he said.

“For every additional £1 billion spent on FOBTs, an estimated 7,000 jobs are created in the betting sector.

“At the same time consumer spending on other goods and services falls by £1 billion, which reduces employment in other industries by around 20,000. The reason for this is that FOBTs are a very ‘labour-unintensive’ form of consumer spending.

“The fact that the machines are automated means that FOBTs support very few jobs compared with expenditure on other goods and services.”