Bookies face levy to treat problem gambling

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Bookies face levy to treat problem gambling

By Roger Blitz, Leisure Industries Correspondent
Financial Times UK
Published: January 6 2009


Britain’s biggest betting operators will pay more than £500,000 ($730,000) each towards an annual £5m fund to research and treat problem gambling, under government proposals to be announced on Tuesday.

Ministers have all but given up hope of the gambling industry instituting a voluntary levy to cover the current shortfall in problem-gambling research, running at £21.2m a year.

Bigger operators have been propping up the fund in recent years owing to the unwillingness of smaller operators to contribute. But the government’s proposals suggest they will still contribute the lion’s share of the fund.

Ministers are suggesting that larger online operators pay some £92,000 to £145,000 a year annually over the next three years, while bookmakers with more than 100 shops will pay up to £36,000 and the biggest bingo operators up to £77,000.

That would mean the likes of Gala Coral – which combines land-based bookmaking, casino and bingo with online gambling – would pay a cumulative sum amounting to about 10 per cent of the total fund, insiders at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said.

“This move will secure the future of problem-gambling treatment and ensure all operators pay their way,” one insider said. “Discussions on a voluntary levy have fallen short of the mark and now is the time to get this sorted out one way or the other.”

Department officials insist, meanwhile, that they are not adding to the risk of problem gambling by bowing to industry demands for an increase in prize money on 260,000 slot machines.

The gaming machine industry had pressed ministers to ease the prize limits they imposed on slot machines in 2007, restricting prizes to £35 and maximum stakes to 50p, after reports of large-scale job losses in amusement arcades and a decline in the manufacture of machines for arcades, pubs and clubs.

In recent regulations, the DCMS doubled prize limits to £70 and stakes to £1 – a side-effect being an increase in VAT of £27m a year for the Treasury.

But the Gambling Commission has told ministers that measures are already in place to protect vulnerable customers and that the impact of the increases would, in any case, be reviewed.