Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

A FOBT ban could be terminal for high-street bookies – and great for a Labour donor

‘The crack cocaine of gambling’ and its enemies

[PA Wire/Press Association Images]

Hands up: who knows what a FOBT is? It stands for fixed odds betting terminal. No? Well, you should, because they are a serious menace to society. That’s what Ed Miliband says, anyway.

FOBTs, you see, are those souped-up slot machines one can find in bookmakers’ shops all over the country, especially in deprived areas, usually next to Poundland. The most popular ones offer casino-type games, such as roulette, and have become notorious because of the speed with which they enable punters to lose large sums of money: up to £100 every 20 seconds, apparently. The Daily Mail likes to call FOBTs the ‘crack cocaine of gambling’, which makes them sound much more fun than they are. Campaigners claim that gaming companies use FOBTs to prey on ‘the most vulnerable’, by which they mean the feckless poor.

Miliband, a puritan at heart, wants to give councils the power to ban FOBTs. David Cameron, for his part, says that he wants to see ‘empirical evidence’ before he takes action, but he does believe that there are ‘problems with the betting and gambling industry’ and that it is his job to stamp them out.

The hoo-hah has so far done the gambling industry little harm. Playtech Plc, which makes much of the gambling software for FOBTs, computers and  mobile phones, last month announced better-than-expected results for the end of last year. It’s true that Ladbrokes, Britain’s leading bookmaker, is now halting its shop expansion strategy, but that was more to do with a broader move into the digital sphere than any response to the panic over FOBTs.

In fact, there must be lots of people who have been introduced to FOBTs because of the fuss surrounding them.

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