The Power to Destroy

Student Gambling Addiction a Growing Concern

By editor on March 8, 2013

Conor Bates | Sports editor

In 1951, FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover boldly declared that “gambling is a vicious evil; it corrupts our youth and blights the lives of adults.” While I personally wouldn’t go that extreme, it would be an oversight to consider his words foolish. While gambling may or may not be a root of evil, it is certainly a root of many problems, and no more so than in Ireland.

Gambling with the Devil.

Ireland is a nation of gamblers. A recent RTÉ documentary, ‘The Gambling Gene’, put forward a theory that Ireland has always been a country of people who like to bet. We love risks, we crave bragging rights over peers and we all enjoy a story of someone who succeeds without having to do much work. It’s not that we’re lazy, we’re just instilled with a desire to beat the system. We’ve all heard the anecdotal story of the man who won a ten-match football bet, with a wonder strike in the last minute, and sailed into the sunset. Similarly, we recall the stories of the people who lose, and lose big, on speculations and sure things alike.

The issue here is that, nowadays, many young people are getting wrapped up in betting. Too often those tales of woe are espoused by a friend or colleague on campus. Budgeting for student life in a recession can be a tough enough task without diminishing your resources on flutters. The cause of the spike in youth betting is easily identifiable as modern technological marketing.

Fifty years ago organised gambling was considered dodgy and illegitimate. These days going into a bookmaker is as banal and normal as going to the corner-shop. But for our young, computer-engrossed generation, betting has become so much simpler. Online gambling is the ultimate experience in convenience risk-taking. Through Facebook ads, sponsored Google results and popup links on all of your favourite websites, the modern gambling firm has targeted the young, tech-savvy male, and offered him a link to perceived wealth. Journalist and author of ‘Free Money’, Declan Lynch, has concisely claimed that “in history, there has never been the invention of a technology which has so suited an addiction.”

The truth of the matter is that for many people out there, bookmakers have a direct line to a punter’s pocket, literally and figuratively. Paddy Power is Ireland’s largest bookmaker, and one of our largest PLCs. With a reported profit of nearly €140 million in 2011, just under 10% was generated through online means. This figure is expected to rise significantly in the coming years. The simplicity of the whole process is staggering. Sign up for an account, which is often accompanied by a joining gift of a free bet, and you now have access to any gambling market you want. Paddy Power have followed a successful ethos of, ‘if you can talk about it, you can bet on it’. A soccer match between two unpronounceable teams in Georgia, the next president of Venezuela, the closing price of commodities on Wall Street, the winner of the next horse race, the winner of the next virtual horse race, all at your fingertips, whether you want them or not. What started as a reasonably innocuous attempt to predict the first scorer in the 5:30 kickoff has now turned into binge betting on the Best Sound Editing at the Oscars.

While it’s hard to blame any bookmaker for seeking to improve their own bottom line, the fact is that their benefit is coming at the expense of many of Ireland’s youths. Gambling is an addiction. It’s as plain as that. We don’t have to look far into the back pages of any leading newspaper to find a story of a sportsperson with a troubled gambling history. Take Armagh Gaelic Footballer Oisin McConville, who began gambling aged fourteen. At one stage he claims to have had three unpaid car loans, but only one car. Or English footballer Michael Chopra, who has been blighted for the last ten years by unresolved wagers and implications of betting fraud.

Dr. Fiona Weldon of the Rutland Rehabilitation Centre notes that there has been a notable increase in young males reporting to their clinics with gambling addictions. The trend seems to be an uptake in gambling as a hobby from a frighteningly young age. Through internet exposure, patients at the centre can arrive in their early twenties and have already worked up volumes of debt, far beyond their humble years. Even more worrying is the fact that in these dark days of austerity, they are presenting debts which are larger than ever. Proportionally speaking, this could present an unprecedented disaster for the future of the Irish societal situation.

Despite what you have just read, I’m not vehemently anti-gambling. I see no harm in going to the races with your friends and throwing a few quid on an outsider, or backing a few teams on the weekend to make it more interesting viewing. Gambling responsibly does have the ability to add value. It is an extra thrill. When you comfortably have the means to do it, can enjoy doing it, and can walk away from a tipple without the need to redouble your effort, win or lose, then it can be an entertaining pastime.

The flipside is that it has a calculated power to destroy. If you gamble purely for the money, you can’t beat the system. Gambling addiction is on the rise, and this is definitely the case among younger people. Accessibility is the driving motivation and there is no mitigating factor against this exposure.

Many young people now have a dangerous relationship with betting. The last word on the matter is the clearest truth of all when it comes to gambling and gambling addiction; the law of averages is basic statistics, and it lies in the bookies’ favour.

You can’t beat it. If you could, they would have been out of business years ago.


http://www.universitytimes.ie/2013/03/08/student-gambling-addiction-a-growing-concern/