The Independent’s assessment of gambling lacks evidence

the gambling industry always receive fair press coverage? This was an issue that struck yours truly when reading an article published by The Independent last week.

Simon Kelner, the former editor and managing director of the newspaper, constructed a damning verdict, titled: “When did gambling become the nation’s new tipple?”, and called upon society to “stop poor people becoming poorer”. Kelner used his own experience of gambling in betting shops and criticised a lack of regulation in the industry, as well as what it causes, particularly in light of heavy advertising from gambling operators that consumers are presented with. We can assume from the nature of the article that this was a focus on the UK market.

Without taking issue with a perfectly-entitled opinion on the moral rights and wrongs of gambling, it seems only right to give gambling a fair trial. The Independent’s article did raise some poignant arguments, but also appeared to present some sweeping statements not backed up by evidence.

Here are some highlights of the article and some analysis of those particular points:

• Kelner began the article by discussing how the image of the industry has changed from the time when he was growing up, when adverts for alcoholic beverage companies were commonplace and the general view of gambling was negative. He wrote: “While alcohol advertising is subject to exceptionally stringent regulation, and the government is pondering whether to stop junk food ads before TV’s 9pm watershed, the growing number of online betting firms are seemingly able to promote themselves with unrestricted freedom.”

To state that operators promote themselves with "unrestricted freedom" seems an odd choice of wording. This is when taking into account that three high-profile bookmakers operating in the UK have had complaints against their ads upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) since the start of 2014. This includes the 5525 complaints about Paddy Power’s advertising of money-back specials regarding the trial of athlete Oscar Pistorius, accused of premeditated murder, the most complained about ad of 2014. Let’s also not forget the 98 complaints about the “Ladbrokes Life” campaign, or the incidents of one complainant alleging that three ads on its Twitter page were likely to be of particular appeal to children.

In each of these cases, complaints were upheld, albeit not all complaints about Ladbrokes were upheld, and the ads in question were not allowed to appear again in their current form. While there is an argument that taking that course of action is akin to closing a stable door after a horse has bolted, the ASA’s actions contradict the specific wording of “unrestricted freedom”. That is without even mentioning some of the terms that members of the self-regulatory body the Senet Group adhere to, such as a voluntary ban on advertising sign-up offers that include free bets and free money before 9pm.

• Kelner claims in the final paragraph of the article that there has been an “alarming rise in gambling-related suicides”.

This was without referencing a particular study, specific numbers, periods when the increase is meant to have occurred or to which region the “alarming rise” applies to. We contacted the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) about the article’s claim. UKGC said it has not conducted its own research into this issue, was not aware of research from other sources that has been conducted on this topic and would not be able to point us in the direction of such a study.

Having looked around, we did see that there have been various reports on this issue. It was reported in 2013 that 128 people had committed suicide in Victoria, Australia, which was related to gambling addictions over the previous 10 years, according to figures released by the Victorian coroner. In terms of worldwide or even UK-specific statistics, there does not seem to be a clear explanation of a particular increase.

Gambling Insider sent an email to Kelner asking for clarity on the points about advertising restriction and the supposed increase in gambling-related suicide numbers, but did not receive a response before publishing this article. Therefore, we can only speculate on the specifics.

• Another sentence not to be backed up was the parting line: “We must be able to do something to stop poor people becoming poorer.”

This was without reference to the number of players from a particular background that lose money or place high stakes when gambling, be it through land-based or online means. The article does not contain data showing that poor people are targeted by operators or a definition of what constitutes as a “poor” person.

This could perhaps have been inspired by Geofutures’ research that showed that in December 2013, 34% of UK betting shops were located in the most-deprived quartile, compared to 16% in the least-deprived quartile. Again, we can only speculate, but even this is not evidence of amounts of money being lost by players in certain areas or types of player.

The article is not entirely full of unfair points. Kelner mentions the “seed of corruption that betting has planted in sports from football to snooker” and it is difficult to disagree with that, or that gambling ads are difficult to avoid. Data published by Ofcom showed that the number of gambling ad spots on TV increased from 152,000 in 2006 to 1.39 million in 2012, and it would be unlikely that the number could have fallen by much, if at all, since then.

To be clear, the intention here is not to make an accusation that Kelner or The Independent has attempted to scaremonger readers about problem gambling or that anything deliberately untruthful was published. That is even though there was an omission in the article about problem gambling flat-lining for the last two years, with UKGC figures showing that 0.5% of players are problem gamblers, based on 1,000 telephone surveys conducted per quarter, 2,000 online surveys conducted per quarter and screen scoring.

At a time when the gambling market is coming under increased scrutiny, such as details surfacing of Paddy Power failing to keep its anti-money laundering and social responsibility standards in check and The Times publishing various articles about the dangers of fixed-odds betting terminals, it should remain essential to deal only in facts, whether they show you what you wish to see or not.