A fixed-odds betting terminal at a bookmaker’s. The machines let users bet £100 every 20 seconds. Photograph: Daniel Hambury/PA
Ministers have demanded that bookmakers hand over a high-speed, high-stakes betting terminal to researchers to assess whether the machines are addictive to gamblers – a move that the industry has previously resisted.
With the prime minister acknowledging “concerns” raised by the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, over the spread of the machines in Britain’s high streets, the bookmakers have come under increasing pressure to regulate fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs), dubbed the “crack cocaine of gambling”.
On Thursday the culture minister Helen Grant will tell the chief executives of five of the biggest bookmakers in Britain that they must release a machine for researchers to analyse. In December the Responsible Gambling Trust (RGT), a charity funded through industry donations, published research into gaming machines which did not examine FOBTs because “no bookmaker volunteered a betting shop for research”.
Campaigners said Cambridge University academics had also attempted to get hold of a machine to test players’ reactions in 2012, but were rebuffed. Instead they were left trying to simulate betting shop gaming with computer terminals. Adrian Parkinson of the Campaign for Fairer Gambling said he had attempted to link machine makers with Steve Sharman, a psychologist at Cambridge University, who concluded that without a machine “they failed to recreate the equivalent live scenario that would be conducive to proper research. Put simply, they were not reflective of real gambling.”
This apparent lack of co-operation had alarmed ministers, who have said they will wait for the conclusion of research by the trust before considering a reduction in the maximum stake on FOBTs from £100, which can currently be wagered every 20 seconds. According to researchers, while the number of people addicted to the gambling machines represents only 1% of the total number of gamblers, such is the extent of their habit that they contribute up to 50% of industry betting revenue.
The result has been pressure on the industry to hand over a terminal, with ministerial sources confirming: “Bookmakers are working to make a machine available for research purposes in a manner that is fair and impartial.” On Thursday the bookmakers will be expected to present plans to link players with data in a way to “understand player behaviour, and to assess the effectiveness of the harm mitigation measures being introduced”.
Parkinson told the Guardian: “The request I made was born out of a disbelief that no valid research using an actual live terminal and data had ever been commissioned. They know that allowing truly independent academics a live terminal with access to data to study player behaviour will reveal the extent of the problem with these machines and they are determined to prevent it.
“I used my contacts in the industry to try to facilitate this research. Now Helen Grant is saying she will make it happen but I don’t think she fully comprehends the resistance she will meet.
“All those at the RGT and the bookmaking executives who control it are complicit in preventing truly independent research. Without it we will never get to the bottom of the problem with FOBTs.”
A spokesperson for the Association of British Bookmakers denied that the industry had “refused access to gaming machines” adding: “The industry believes that there should be a co-ordinated approach to machines research.”
