Reversing the odds on the gambling industry
It might be hard to find a former coal industry executive fighting for tough climate laws. The same holds true for former bosses in the alcohol and tobacco industries who regret making money off those vices and want to make amends. Not so in the gambling industry.
In recent weeks, three men who helped build the world’s biggest sports betting company have launched an unusual campaign. They are warning investors of “the risk of acute social harm” in supporting today’s more addictive forms of gambling.
Their personal remorse is being turned into public remedy.
All three businessmen, Stewart Kenny, Fintan Drury, and Ian Armitage, were instrumental in the rise of Paddy Power, an Irish bookmaker that is now part of Flutter Entertainment, a global operator. Their new organization, Stop Gambling Harm, comes out of moral misgivings over not foreseeing how online and mobile betting activities have come “at a great cost to the most vulnerable in society.”
“The internet was the explosion,” Mr. Kenny told RTÉ News. “In fairness to the industry, we didn’t realize how much it would take over people’s lives.”
The three believe society will soon turn on the industry, piling up class-action lawsuits as new technologies help lower the resistance and the barriers for those with addictive behaviors. In the coming year, they hope to convince investors in Ireland and the United Kingdom that the industry must get ahead of society, taking less profit by instituting such reforms as mandatory spending limits for those under 25 years old.
They are targeting investors because they have learned from the inside that both industry executives and government find it all too attractive to maximize revenue from gambling, either in profits or in taxes. “You could argue the government is as addicted to tax revenue as the unfortunate gambling addicts are to online slots,” Mr. Kenny told the Racing Post.
A rise in gambling addiction – especially during the isolation of COVID-19 – could overload mental health services, Mr. Kenny warns. Now a therapist, he says many people who have suffered from gambling addiction encouraged him to speak out.
“The industry of which I was part for decades has for far too long hoped for a ‘magic wand’ solution that would curb gambling addiction without affecting profits,” he wrote in the Daily Mail.
It is worth noting that the three businessmen relied on talent, hard work, and teamwork for success in their profession. They now want to help those who fall for the false promise of luck as a force in life. A study last year by the University of Oxford found a half-million people in the U.K. spend 40% of their disposable income on gambling.
Simply nudging the industry toward more reforms that help problem gamblers, however, may not be enough. The pervasive concept of chance must be addressed.
In a 2020 book, “The Myth of Luck,” philosopher Steven D. Hales of Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania writes: “We cannot master luck because there is literally nothing to defeat. We will see that luck is no more than a persistent and troubling illusion.
“Cleaning our mental house of dusty old concepts that we’re hanging onto because we keep hoping that they will one day be useful – that is liberating. To give up luck is to regain our own agency in the world.”
To be sure, moral remorse over one’s past in gambling promotion can bring practical benefits.
Yet spiritual liberation from a notion of luck would have lasting impact.
