As the blaring headlines told us last week, the more liberal regime for casinos in Britain will mean that we will turn into a nation of compulsive gamblers in double-quick time.
We are already well on the way to being addicted to internet gambling, according to some press reports. As for the new licensing laws across the UK, most of the quality papers think that it is clearly a matter of time before Britain staggers drunkenly into an abyss of murderous debauchery.
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Yea, verily, we are approaching the end of days, when Albion will subside under a tide of alcohol-fuelled barbarity, with people who do something as sinful as gambling leading the charge of the Gadarene swine into the madness to come. Or so some editors would have you believe...
It was George Bernard Shaw who declared that "newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation". Once again I side with the sage, who was no mean writer about sport, especially boxing, by the way.
The ballyhoo over the more liberal gambling and licensing laws is a classic Middle England media scare, driven by a political agenda which has precious little to do with high morals, and much to do with low politics. To put it bluntly, there are still a lot of Tories out there, and since New Labour has stolen their tough-on-crime act, they must find activities such as gambling and drink to cause the kind of moral panic that they think will drive floating voters back into their arms. Fat chance, I would say.
Those of us who live in the real world realise that while drinking and gambling can be dangerous, and much more should be done to educate people about possible perils, it is nevertheless impossible to put the genie back in the bottle.
The great British public wants to drink and bet where and when it wants to, and the argument against liberalisation of the laws has long since been lost.
What has not been pointed out in the great debate over gambling, in particular, is that the issues at stake are not matters of control and licence, but which form of entertainment will win the battle for the public's money.
In recent years, as was long predicted, working people have genuinely had more time and more disposable income to play with. The looming recession - and you can bet on that arriving any day now - may restrict leisure time and money, but the long-term trends have been established.
More people will be drinking and gambling on a more regular basis, and they will wish to pursue new ways of entertaining themselves. And that is what gambling is - a form of entertainment.
People will take their entertainment seriously, and will go for things that are modern and, to use another newspaper description, sexy. Which is why I worry about horse-racing's response to the undeniable growth in such activities as internet poker.
It has even been reported that entrepreneurs are looking to move poker out of the virtual arena and on to the High Street, with players able to walk into a poker parlour and take part in a game without any form-filling or preconditions. That is surely a threat to racing.
Yes, racing is still the largest single medium for gambling in the UK, and more money is being gambled on horses than ever, but the sport's share of the market has diminished. Should the growth in the overall gambling market slow down, as some experts have predicted, then racing's share of the pot will decrease with disastrous effects because, whether we like it or not, money from gambling does subsidise this entire sporting industry.
Put it this way: if the paymaster bookies sneeze, racing will catch pneumonia.
Already, evidence exists that people are turning away from racing as their main entertainment. Hundreds of millions of pounds are now being spent on internet poker in this country each year, and a lot of that is new money invested by young people, male and female, who had no previous experience of the sport of racing. They choose poker because it is easily available over the internet, and is fun and straightforward, once the basics of flushes and full houses are sorted out.
Internet gambling companies are even now looking for more and better ways of entertaining people; they understand that innovation is the key to staying at the forefront of the modern entertainment industry.
Sadly, racing in general has not kept pace with such developments. One bookmaker told me that, on one level, what is needed is more product, ie more all-weather and night-time racing to fill satellite and internet screens.
But more fundamentally, the industry needs to market and promote itself as a modern, vibrant sport and the best and most stimulating medium for gambling around. And the way to do that is to get more people to go racing and become involved in the ethos of the sport. But that takes money, and the amounts being spent on marketing racing are pitiful compared to the massive budgets of dotcom giants.
I believe that racing has been a terrific form of entertainment. Always. It's a message this sporting industry is failing to get across, however...and that does not augur well.
Source: Sport Scotsman
