According to two-thirds of people in Great Britain, it is the fixed odds betting terminals that encourage problem gambling. A Sunday People survey was conducted to reveal that 66 percent believe there are more bookmakers than necessary and another 56 percent say that there needs to be a limit on the maximum that can be gambled at a terminal.
Maximum stakes are currently £100 per spin and that’s leading to people losing a lot of money. The poor boroughs where the fixed odd betting machines (FOBT) are resulted in a loss of £470 million for 2013. In the areas where people could actually afford to play, the loss was only £231 million.
With statistics like this, many believe that the machines were being placed in the poorer areas by bookies for the sole purpose of forming an addiction. The poor areas suffer from a considerable amount of unemployment and therefore people are betting in the hopes of winning so that they can put food on the table.
Due to the amount of gambling that is being done on these FOBTs, it has been called the crack cocaine of the gambling world. Once people get hooked, they cannot walk away, even when they cannot afford to play and take the risk of losing. Once lost, it propels a person to wager again to try and win back what was lost.
The gambling problems are being encouraged by bookies according to many of the people who have been recently polled. The law currently allows for bookies to have a maximum of four of the FOBT machines and that is three more than what any people should be allowed.
More than half of the people who were surveyed believed that bookies placed the machines in poor areas on purpose. Additionally, more than half of the people thought that the spin maximum should be dropped from £100 down to £20.
The Labor Party is backing the Sunday People, who are responsible for pressing the government to put an upper limit of £2 per spin. All of these polls have shown that people have spoken. They don’t want any additional digital casinos. They want control of the ones that are in place.