YouSaid · the spoken record

Rob Davies

lines on the record: 64
first: 2022-02-28
most recent: 2022-02-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yeah, I mean, it's an absolutely symbiotic relationship. You know, I talked earlier about that confluence of events where you have the invention of the iPhone, the smartphone, and you have Tony Blair's gambling act. And you also have the increase in the number of games that are broadcast. Well, on any given Saturday or Sunday, you could potentially watch four or five games now. And until recently, gambling adverts were being shown those broadcasts. A couple of years ago, the gambling industry came forward with a voluntary whistle-to-whistle ban that means you shouldn't see gambling adverts during five minutes either side of the game before 9 p.m. I mean, there are flaws with that that we could talk about. But until quite recently, gambling adverts were simply plastered across those broadcasts to a captive audience. Now, even since the whistle-to-whistle ban, if you're watching a game, you could have one team that's got a gambling sponsor on their shirt. The other one's got a gambling sponsor on their shirt too.”
2022-02-28 · Intelligence Squared · Jackpot: How Gambling Conquered Britain, with Rob Davies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Here, by the way, you know, there is been this awful behavior, and there are these people who are very badly harmed by it. Our estimates of that in terms of how many people are gambling addicts are not very good, but we know that we're talking about hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of people, particularly when you factor in the husbands, wives, children, employers, you know, all the other people who are affected by the harm that a gambling addict suffers. The best estimate is that six other people are affected for every person who has a gambling addiction. And pretty soon those numbers stack up. You're starting to talk about people in your life, people you know. And I think that's something that has remained hidden for a long time. And it's only now that we're really starting to acknowledge it.”
2022-02-28 · Intelligence Squared · Jackpot: How Gambling Conquered Britain, with Rob Davies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From people in the gambling industry, for saying, you know, why don't you talk about alcohol like this? And obviously, the dangers of alcohol are well documented and there are tragic horror stories of alcohol addiction, which is actually more widespread in the UK than gambling addiction by some distance. But the difference is that that is pretty well understood. The alcohol industry has by and large got a fairly good handle on how it should behave. And until relatively recently, the gambling industry simply has not, you know, so you're not your pub landlord is not going to phone you up and say, I've got three free gin and tonics for you if you come down the dog and duck. But the gambling industry has been getting away with that kind of thing for years. And like you say, you know, for the majority of people, it's a harmless activity. It's a bit of fun. And I think it's really important that people like me admit that because, you know, I'm not a campaigner. I'm a journalist, but there is at the margins of the industry. And we're talking about quite a lot of people affected.”
2022-02-28 · Intelligence Squared · Jackpot: How Gambling Conquered Britain, with Rob Davies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, and the worst thing about that is if you're somebody who's trying to stop and you're getting these emails, notifications, text messages, whatever it might be, just enticing you with these free offers. I mean, I've spoken to so many people who had gone three, four, five months without a bet. And then all of a sudden, they say, well, you know, that offer is too good to turn down, isn't it? And I've got a good feeling about this horse or this football match or whatever it might be. And, you know, it's not like the kind of blunderbuss of TV advertising where you send out adverts and you kind of hope that people are paying attention or they haven't gone out of the room to make a cup of tea during half time or whatever it is. You know, this is a company talking directly to you. And now, you know, we're all used to that in lots of walks of life now. I mean, I get so many promotional emails in my inbox, but most of the promotional emails I get are not for potentially addictive products. And, you know, I'm sometimes get a bit of stick, a bit of...”
2022-02-28 · Intelligence Squared · Jackpot: How Gambling Conquered Britain, with Rob Davies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And how disproportionately some companies were relying on people who could be relied upon to lose. And there's a phrase that's used in the gambling industry, which is pretty disgasteful, I guess, which is mug punters, and that's punters, gamblers who can be, you can predict are going to gamble more than they can afford and they're going to lose. And really, a VIP and a mug punter, to my mind, unless you're talking about maybe a footballer who can afford to lose huge sums of money. A mug punter in a VIP are more or less the same thing, in my view.”
2022-02-28 · Intelligence Squared · Jackpot: How Gambling Conquered Britain, with Rob Davies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But it's all designed so that the next conversation you have is we've put a couple hundred quid in your account, mate, have a few bets. And they know they can do that because in the long run, they're going to win far, far more back from you than they're going to spend on buttering you up. And it's extraordinary the extent to which VIP schemes had become widespread until about sort of two or three years ago. I mean, I did a Freedom of Information request to the gambling commission back in 2019, I think it was, based on a tip-off I'd had from someone about a report they had on how reliant companies were on the VIP schemes. And some of the statistics were incredible. I mean, there were companies out there where 2% of their customers were VIPs, but they were making 70, 80% of their revenue from them. It just goes to show how important some of these schemes”
2022-02-28 · Intelligence Squared · Jackpot: How Gambling Conquered Britain, with Rob Davies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think it's more subtle than that. No, it's probably less subtle than that, if anything. I mean, you might have a VIP manager who's somebody who's assigned to essentially keep you playing with the company. And they'll be there doing the kind of the banter.”
2022-02-28 · Intelligence Squared · Jackpot: How Gambling Conquered Britain, with Rob Davies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Done so in a while, and then you know it can range from that to all sorts of lavish hospitality, days at the races. I spoke to a guy who was flown from Dubai to London to see the North London Derby. He was flown to see a Floyd Mayweather boxing match.”
2022-02-28 · Intelligence Squared · Jackpot: How Gambling Conquered Britain, with Rob Davies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the easiest way to describe it is that there's this idea of a VIP, which is a high roller, right? And when I first heard of it, I was thinking, you know, a scene in a James Bond film where he sort of rocks up to the Baccarat table and maybe exchanging witticisms with a femme fatale or the casino owner. But in the world of online gambling, a VIP is essentially someone who can be relied upon to lose and to lose big. If you are that person What the gambling company wants is not only to keep you gambling, but primarily to keep you gambling with them and not take your business elsewhere. And so it's in their interests to give you things. And that can include free bets, which are not free necessarily, but that's the way they're described. Bonuses, cashback, if you lose on certain bets, you might even have money put in your betting account to encourage you to go and place a bet if you have.”
2022-02-28 · Intelligence Squared · Jackpot: How Gambling Conquered Britain, with Rob Davies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The disability, so a story like that is certainly tragic. I spoke to somebody else who was using a redundancy payouts to fund their gambling and was being treated like a VIP. I've spoken obviously to parents who've lost children to suicide. And I think as a parent myself, that's about the worst thing I can imagine happening to anyone. At the sharp end of gambling, these are the kind of stories we're talking about. We're talking about financial ruin, family breakdown, crime, job losses and suicide in the most extreme examples.”
2022-02-28 · Intelligence Squared · Jackpot: How Gambling Conquered Britain, with Rob Davies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, I mean, there are so many and so many from my reporting over the years as well, stories that haven't necessarily made it into the book. But, I mean, there are so many different aspects that you're talking about here. You're talking about financial hardship, for instance. And there was one person I spoke to who had been a very successful businessman until there was a tragic accident during what should have been a routine operation. And he became very severely disabled. And he had a compensation check from the NHS. And he used to go down to a number of bookmakers in his area. They knew that he was gambling with a finite resource and that he couldn't work and that if he lost this money, he wouldn't have any more. And they essentially helped him to place bets that were far beyond his means. And he got through most of that money. And talking to him, he's tried to take his own life. And one of the only reasons he hasn't is that he's physically incapable of doing so. Such is the depth of...”
2022-02-28 · Intelligence Squared · Jackpot: How Gambling Conquered Britain, with Rob Davies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Much into the mainstream in a way that I would argue that it wasn't before, particularly when it comes to football, which is, you know, the national game, the most popular sport in the UK and beyond.”
2022-02-28 · Intelligence Squared · Jackpot: How Gambling Conquered Britain, with Rob Davies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think there are two or three things that all happen at once, more or less, within the space of two or three years that are crucial. The first is the legislation. Tony Blair's government lays down the Gambling Act of 2005. It comes into force in 2007. Now, something happens in between those two dates, which is that the iPhone has invented in 2006. And that's when things really start to take off. Of course, before that, you could bet on a desktop computer, you could bet on a laptop. But once people had smartphones in their pockets, as you know, that took off fairly quickly, essentially everybody had access to gambling 24-7. And there's something else that's going on at the same time as that, which is the massive increase in the number of football games that are being broadcast on live television. So all of these things are happening at once. And it's kind of, I mean, you could argue a toxic combination of events that means that suddenly gambling moves very much.”
2022-02-28 · Intelligence Squared · Jackpot: How Gambling Conquered Britain, with Rob Davies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, well, okay. Well, maybe you can't quite remember. But back then, obviously, you had the high street bookmakers as you do now. And really, the main other option was on-course betting at the racing horses. You had telephone betting, which had been sort of pioneered towards the end of the 90s as some of the firms went offshore to places like Gibraltar and Malta. And you did have a tiny bit of internet betting. But it wasn't a mainstream activity by any means and certainly not the activity that we see now, which is pretty widespread, certainly among young men, certainly among football fans. I wouldn't say it was exactly a niche activity, but it wasn't something that you saw in more or less all parts of society in the way that I believe you do now.”
2022-02-28 · Intelligence Squared · Jackpot: How Gambling Conquered Britain, with Rob Davies · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT