Tacky and demeaning... Football must face the truth about its gambling addiction
By Patrick CollinsAnother match day, another excuse for the hucksters to infest the ad breaks. Ray Winstone barking his toe-curling spiel, the comic Italian yelping his witless script and that vaguely sinister bookie playing out a nursery sketch with his gawping stooge.
They’ll be on parade again on Sunday afternoon, you can bet on it. In fact, where football is concerned you can bet on practically anything.
And as it pockets its painless profits, the national game refuses to recognise the dangers.
Plastered: Football could be seen to be taking gambling to the extreme with its constant advertising
Barely six years have passed since bookmakers, casinos and online operators were allowed to advertise on television. Those six years have changed the face of English football.
The public at large are aware that a transformation is under way and many of the details are already familiar. But the overall picture is genuinely staggering.
The FA themselves have set the tone by acquiring William Hill as an ‘Official Supporter’ for the England team and ‘Official Betting Partner’ for the FA Cup. For 150 years, the FA struggled along without the benefit of an ‘Official Betting Partner’, but their reservations were swept away by the flourish of a cheque.
And they are not alone. The Football League sold the title sponsorship of their three divisions to Sky Bet. Some thought the transaction unbecoming but a price of between £5 million-£6m a year for five years resolved the doubts.
Everywhere: The Football League is now sponsored by Sky Bet, but still has other betting companies paraded around grounds
Payday: A price of between £5 million-£6m a year for five years resolved the doubts about the move
Three of those clubs — Stoke, Fulham and Aston Villa — play in shirts sponsored by gambling companies, with Villa boasting that their benefactor is ‘a leading Asian online betting website’. Which is presumably intended to be reassuring.
Now, some of us have been banging on for a long time about the dangers inherent in football’s shameless embrace of the gambling industry. Not because the companies involved are less than honest, nor because gambling itself is especially immoral.
Our objections centre on the demeaning, depressing tackiness of the culture it generates, a tackiness dramatically expressed by the old slogan of Sky Bet: ‘It Matters More When There’s Money On It.’ Along with the equally repellent explanation: ‘Sport becomes even more exciting. There’s more passion, more pleasure, more pain.’
It was a grotesque distortion of all the decent values which sport represents, yet they knew there were desperate people out there who would take them at their word.
So a climate of avarice was swiftly created. Laddish slogans replaced reasoned argument, major matches took place in front of flickering, pitch-side messages offering odds on the result; an entire industry bawled its insistence that it really does matter more when there’s money on it. And the lie took hold.
The consequences are now starting to emerge, with arrests and charges of spot- fixing and match-fixing. Trials will determine innocence or guilt but the signs are that more arrests and more charges will follow. We knew things had become serious because the Culture Secretary Maria Miller convened a so-called ‘summit’ of our five major sports to debate the issue.
This is the politician’s time-honoured method of declaring ‘Something Must Be Done... And I’m Doing It’. Yet she said something which was at once blindingly obvious yet desperately important: ‘If fans don’t trust what they see, then the integrity of sport will be permanently damaged.’
Chris Eaton was once Fifa’s head of security and is now director of sport integrity at the International Centre for Sport Security. He clearly knows his business and he went a good deal further than Mrs Miller.
Best move? Stoke City made Bet365 their sponsors for the 2012-13 season
PS.
Ashley Young was asked about diving last week. A reasonable question, since the Manchester United forward is an acknowledged expert on the subject.
‘I think it’s one to ask the referees,’ he said. ‘They’re the ones who give free-kicks and penalties.’
It was rather like blaming doctors for disease. Young’s rubber-legged antics have disgusted even the Old Trafford fans these past few seasons. He will become no more popular with this pathetic evasion.
‘I think it’s one to ask the referees,’ he said. ‘They’re the ones who give free-kicks and penalties.’
It was rather like blaming doctors for disease. Young’s rubber-legged antics have disgusted even the Old Trafford fans these past few seasons. He will become no more popular with this pathetic evasion.
No room for doubt, no shades of grey; there is the problem in all its urgency. Sadly, the FA general secretary, Alex Horne, fell below the level of events. Emerging from his meeting at the ministry, he was in languid form.
‘I think the general consensus around the room was this is not a big issue,’ he remarked. ‘The intelligence that we have says this is not a widescale issue at the moment but, again, we don’t want to be complacent.’
Financial move: Fulham got sponsorship from Marathonbet for this season
Decent bet: Villa were sponsored by Genting Casinos and 32Red previously and now don Dafabet on their strip
Well, it won’t do. The people charged with running the game have closed their eyes for too long. In an ideal world, the Government would revive the ban on gambling advertising.
Logo: It is impossible to escape the advertising of betting companies as a football fan
Assuming that measure is not being considered, the very least we should expect is a rigorous examination of the mounting evidence, a recognition that the integrity of sport at large, and football in particular, is at stake.
Thankfully, it appears that Mr Horne may be having second thoughts. Elsewhere in these pages, we report that the FA are considering banning players from involvement in any form of football gambling. It is a small but welcome step in the right direction.
For the screeching hustlers in the ad breaks are sounding a warning to the game. Already, we scent the faint whiff of corruption. If we do nothing, it will surely become a full-blown stench.
Arrested: Blackburn's DJ Campbell, in action against Ipswich Town last week, has been arrested in connection with the match-fixing scandal
They held the draw last week. A fascinating draw, too: Arsenal v Spurs, Derby v Chelsea, Blackburn v Manchester City.
Unfortunately, it passed off without much publicity. Radio and television downplayed the details, while the newspapers tended to lose it in a lowly corner of an inside page.
It was the third round of the FA Cup, and it was almost a non-event. At this point, let us wallow in nostalgia. Monday lunchtime, with notepaper blank, pencil sharpened. The fruity burble of the BBC’s Bryon Butler, manoeuvring his radio microphone through the corridors of the FA headquarters at Lancaster Gate.
No exposure: Charlie Sheringham and Teddy Sheringham pose with the FA Cup after the Third Round Draw
An FA suit speaks: ‘The next item on the agenda is the draw for the third round of the Football Association Challenge Cup.’ Ivory balls rattle in a velvet bag and the suit speaks again: ‘Charlton Athletic, will play…’. Another suit responds: ‘Manchester United.’ At home! Against United! We punch the air and scribble triumphantly.
In fact, Charlton never did draw United. We always got the likes of Luton or Scunthorpe, who tended to beat us. But no matter. For a few wondrous moments we held our breath and dreamed our dreams.
Truly, it was one of the great days of winter. But times have changed, and not for the better. The Premier League is the Promised Land, where wealth is worshipped and excess is admired. Everything else, including the FA Cup, is a mere distraction.
In the background: Radio and TV downplayed the details of the draw
Why, the current holders are Wigan; a fine club who, on the day, well deserved their victory. But if all the big teams had put their minds to it, then they wouldn’t have got close.
As it was, they became the first Cup winners to be relegated in the same season. And they would willingly have swapped the silver pot for 17th place in the Premier League.
For romance is a luxury in a game which reveres only the bottom line. Which is why the Premier League, for all its arrogant affectation, is the only game in town. And why they held the FA Cup third round draw last week, and nobody noticed.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2523856/PATRICK-COLLINS-Football-face-truth-gambling-addiction.html#ixzz2nYYaQ9GB
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