“Sports betting addiction acts as a real “poor man’s wealth tax”” | EUROtoday

HASWhen the sports activities funds is threatened by extreme cuts, an important query arises: the best way to sustainably finance sports activities coverage, significantly after the momentum generated by the Olympic and Paralympic Games? A financing avenue deserves to be significantly studied throughout the framework of the subsequent finance invoice: what if sports activities betting, which generates large earnings, contributed extra to supporting sport itself, as an alternative of solely filling pockets bookmakers?

The summer season of 2024 may have been of outstanding sporting density: between Euro soccer 2024 and the Olympic and Paralympic Games, we have now been copiously served with robust and collective feelings. This is the place the fantastic thing about sport lies: producing moments of standard fervor that deliver folks collectively and create commonality past the divisions of our societies.

Unfortunately, it’s clear that these feelings are shamelessly exploited by on-line sports activities betting operators. Since the liberalization of the market in 2010, they’ve competed in promoting ingenuity, promising to make us “live sport stronger”that “the most important thing is to win” cash, even going as far as to indicate that betting can contribute to social success.

An ever extra captive clientele

If the National Gaming Authority (ANJ), accountable for regulating the sector 12 months after 12 months, just lately tried to wash up among the most shameful slogans (notably the notorious “Everything for the lady”), it’s clear that this doesn’t decelerate the rise in stakes, which proceed to develop exponentially.

For soccer alone, uploads amounted, in line with the ANJ, to 135 million euros throughout Euro 2016, to 332 million euros for the 2018 World Cup, to 425 million euros on the event of Euro 2020, which was held in 2021, and, lastly, to 597 million over the last World Cup, in 2022. And, as anticipated, 2024 will probably be a document 12 months, with already 650 million euros of bets on the Euro and 365 million on the Olympic Games, or greater than 1 billion euros on these two occasions.

The operators have understood this properly and are flooding the general public area, our screens and even the outfits of athletes, after they haven’t instantly created their very own media to maintain an ever extra captive clientele of their nets, but in addition to enter new gamers into the spiral of habit.

The illusory hope of an enormous prize, nonetheless, has devastating results on the well being of gamers. Whether it’s over-indebtedness, the chance of job loss, psychological and bodily penalties corresponding to despair, isolation or the chance of suicide, we’re generally informed that this solely issues a minority of individuals. gamers with extreme apply. But it’s exactly these gamers who’re driving the expansion of the sector and lining the pockets of operators.

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