Why You’ll Never Be More Than 3 Seconds From An FOBT

Fixed odds betting terminals have hit the headlines again so bookmakers are scrambling to placate their critics ahead of an independent governmental report to be published later this month.

There are many challenges facing the gambling industry today. The northeastern US is becoming saturated with casinos, Macau’s profit margins have taken a dent from Chinese crackdowns on junket operators and in the UK bookmakers are making gambling news by devising spurious systems of limitation for themselves and their customers, that make no sense, aren’t applied properly and fail miserably even when they are, in what can only be thought of as a halfhearted denial of impending reality if one were feeling quite generous.

Fixed Odds Betting Terminals Oddly Not Fixed

• Bookmakers agree new voluntary code of practice

• Mandatory, if laughable, limits set on FOBT sessions

• UK mobile gambling will pose threat as sector grows

The issue at hand is the ever contentious FOBT (fixed odds betting terminals) that have been described by some clever wag as “the crack cocaine of gambling”, which is awfully catchy and probably wholly inaccurate. Still, however one describes them for marketing and lobbying purposes, the machines do represent a fast paced, high stakes opportunity for gamblers that can have a detrimental effect on those without any self control.

As one might imagine this has led to more than a few instances of alarmist headlines in the British tabloid press, the few extreme cases being held up as a nightmare vision of the future, and this has translated into a fair degree of political pressure to place some sort of limit on people’s pleasure. With a Conservative government attempting to look caring it surprised no one they announced in May that local authorities would have more power to limit the machines availability in their municipalities.

Independent research that was commissioned by the government reports later this month on the links between FOBTs and problem gambling, and with a general election ahead that is still looking for trigger issues to play with, the bookmakers are doing all they can to head off the issue at the pass. This is why they’ve just introduced another batch of codes of practice that they will voluntarily introduce by the end of January next year? Will it be enough to stave off overt political interest in the machines?
No. No, probably not.

New Code Old Failings

The code of practice as it stands now says that players must be given the opportunity to, and indeed be encouraged to, set time or loss limits on their play, and that staff must monitor customers for problem behavior, but there are no upper losses limitations put in place. As of January that will all change as punters are forced to either set a time or loss limit on their session or opt for the default setting which forces them to take a break after 30 minutes or a 250 GBP loss. Which sounds entirely sensible.

Of course it only sounds sensible until you hear that the enforced break will be 3 seconds. No, that’s not a typo, they really have decided the best way to look serious about tackling problem gambling in the UK is to introduce a 3 second pause every half an hour. Critics have already pounced on this piece of stupidity saying the bookmakers were only “paying lip service” to the problem, which frankly is far more generous a description than it need be.

The new code only just edged forward but a little further than the last code, and the last one was, it has to be said, one of the most epic failures of self-regulation yet seen in any industry ever. Not only did it fail, but it failed in less than four months. It didn’t even have the decency to be arguable, the failure was total. Using the bookmaker’s own figures research found that at the start of the 15 week monitoring period less than 0.3% of punters chose to impose limits on themselves – at the end of 15 weeks that number had fallen to 0.04%.

Yes, that’s right, UK bookmakers created a code of practice that actually made things worse. That this new code introduces a 3 second delay every half an hour is unlikely to satisfy any of their critics, as Adrian Parkinson of the Campaign for Fairer Gambling said the failure of the current code to achieve it’s aims was “conclusive evidence that these measures are not successful in helping socially responsible gambling or deterring problem gambling.”

Being Seen To Be Doing Something

When the independent report into FOBTs and problem gambling by the Responsible Gambling Trust is published later this month it is unlikely to be flattering, and whilst in reply to it bookmakers can now point to their shiny new mandatory limits regime, it is still of great concern to them that this might develop some tabloid legs placing it squarely in the firing line as a political target issue come the election, and knee-jerk political reactions could easily translate into hugely disadvantageous circumstance for the machines or even prohibition.

“The limit-setting as we propose is the right way forward.” Insists ABB chief executive Dirk Vennix, although what proof his has for this in light of the previous failures is questionable. Especially so since the chief executive of Ladbrokes is already calling for a “period of stability” on the part of the government so, he claims, they can test the latest measures, which is just a mealy mouthed way of begging to be left alone. It remains to be seen if the politicians and public will heed this call given just how pathetic the bookmakers are making themselves look.

The competition from online gambling sites in the UK is, of course, growing year on year with the biggest companies dwarfing the high street bookmaking chains already. This means that high street bookmakers can’t afford to gamble quite so much that their lackluster voluntary codes of practice will actually be robust enough to defend against the harsh words of their critics. In fact such pathetic, ill-conceived, attempts to placate now are likely to have quite the opposite effect, especially as that appointment with the ballot box draws near.

If high street bookmakers was to cling onto their marketshare in face of competition from internet betting in the UK and elsewhere, they will have to face up to the reality both of political and public perceptions of FOBTs and may, just may, have to actually adopt workable, sensible and successful policies that might well have to be regulated from outside the industry. Given just how bad they were at self-regulation last time, why they expect it to work well enough to deflect criticism now is anyone’s guess. Perhaps they need a 3 second break to think about it… oops, time’s up.