Palace, gambling down, Bet365 | My week in iGaming #14
Another football season over…
Well, another English football season comes to a conclusion with the final whistle of the Chelsea-Real Betis European game. Or maybe the Oldham vs Southend play-off? Depends on your perspective. So, which clubs stood out?
Liverpool
Liverpool started as third favourites for the Premier League title behind Citeh and The Arse. But it didn’t take long for Slot’s team to lay that notion to rest and from the New Year there wasn’t really anything any other club were going to do to stop them. Not the most exciting title race, but the table doesn’t lie at the end of the season; Liverpool were worthy champions.
Man Utd and Spurs
Or does the table lie? How on earth did Man U and Spurs square up as the last two in the Europa League Final having both finished just above the 3 relegated clubs? Spurs ended up losing 22 league games – the highest number for any Premier League that didn’t go down. Well, it all provided a bit more of a talking point than the Premier League ‘race’ this past season.
Crystal Palace
Well, I kind of got one of my early season predictions right. Kind of. Back in August I tipped Crystal Palace for a top 3 or 4 finish. It didn’t happen but a first major trophy as a result of their widely-popular FA Cup Final win over Manchester City surpasses that. Well done to the Eagles – you put a lot of smiles on faces both inside and outside Sarf East London.
Time to enjoy some cricket for a few months.
UK Gambling figures down
I was surprised – and I bet I’m not the only one – to see that participation in gambling in the UK decreased recently. Data released on 22 May 2025 covering the period September 2024 to January 2025 showed overall participation at 46% of the population versus 49% for the previous period. More surprisingly, one of the areas that saw a comparatively big dip was the Lottery (37% to 34%). For the full rundown have a butcher’s at this from the Gambling Commission.
Bet365 for sale?
In early May it was reported that Denise Coates was pondering selling the family (-started) business. The figure bandied around in the media? A cool £9 billion. As with all these things though there are a number of possible permutations to the potential sale that could see either a clean break or the Coates family retaining a partial stake. Apparently there are also discussions with private equity groups regarding taking a pre-float stake in Bet365.
Iconic British business
What a story though. From a portakabin in a Potteries car park to phenomenally successful UK business, rapidly expanding internationally and a brand to die for. And they were only founded in 2000.
It’s a great story, but. Bet365 potentially owned and operated offshore has some significant ramifications for the UK gambling industry and the UK tax coffers. Let’s be honest, it’s a business the UK can ill afford to lose.
Read more here about the possible sale.
The numbers don’t add up
Suicide is clearly a sensitive subject. Gambling-related suicide arguably more so. So when MPs, charities and industry organisations start talking about it, we need to listen.
A 7 May 2025 letter signed by Layla Moran MP, Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee after a meeting of the committee with anti-gambling lobby group, Gambling WIth Lives, and fellow MPs included the following statement:
“Gambling can cause serious harm: financially, physically, mentally, and in some cases as a cause of suicide, with 117 to 496 gambling-related suicides every year in England.”
The cited source for this information is a January 2023 OHID report.
Credibility?
That is a very wide range indeed and will immediately have many readers questioning the credibility of the data and statement. To use a sporting analogy, a football commentator wouldn’t tell their viewers that the attendance at the game was somewhere between 12,000 and 50,000.
No doubt this committee and the lobby group have the best of intentions but urging Government action based, among other things, on data such as that seems somewhere between naive and disingenuous. Here’s sister site No Wagering’s take on the issue.
The numbers aren’t convincing
Still on the topic of using data to advance an argument or cause… The Gambling Commission recently published a report on gambling harm experiences. This time they went down the qualitative, not quantitative route. In a bid to understand more about the lived experiences of problem gamblers the Commission spoke to a cohort of problem gamblers in a bid to understand more, to glean information that could help future policy
They spoke to 25 people.
Somewhere between 46% and 49% of UK adults gamble – that’s comfortably north of 25m people. Take out the lottery-only folks and you still have around 15m people gambling each month. ‘Problem gambler’ estimates vary wildly depending on the source, but let’s call it 0.5% (of the population, not of gamblers) and we get to about 260,000 people.
25 people seems a rather small number of people to talk to if you’re looking for solutions for problems that may be affecting around a quarter of a million people.
The power of language
Here’s an interesting one. We know there are concerns about where, when and how gambling adverts are delivered to the public. The concern is generally over possible influence on young people and on vulnerable people. Advert times on TV and using celebrities who look young or will appeal to young people top the general consensus list of things the industry needs to keep a collective eye on. Casinos and others in the industry have to also be wary of how they present things to the public – they can’t go around suggesting playing this or that will make you rich or change your life.
In New Jersey though, over in the US, regulators are looking to take this to another level. Legislation is being developed that not only determines where gambling can be advertised but also commits to a study of the language used in gambling advertising. There’s speculation as to whether The Garden State will see a set of approved words rolled-out for gambling advertising. This could lead to the Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE) seeking to determine “the effectiveness of various words and phrases” used in casino and sports betting advertising. They will factor whether or not some language and terms encourage more responsible gambling, whether some messages resonate more with problem gamblers or the vulnerable and what impact repeating words and phrases may have. They will also have to consider presentation – font size, formatting etc.
This is indeed an interesting one and one that’s going to take an awful lot of research to draw some conclusions. They will certainly have to talk to or assess more than 25 people.
Cynical and shameless
With comparisons to drug dealers offering freebies at the school gates to get kids hooked, MyStake was caught out recently targeting vulnerable, problem gamblers.
Brian Bennett
Ok, after MyStake, let’s at least end on a positive note.
Brian Bennett? Not a name that rolls off the tongue or comes front of mind when thinking of sporting heroes. His name actually conjures up more an image of a librarian, council worker or ‘quiet bloke who works in accounts’. But that will no doubt change. A couple of weeks ago I took the Friday off work to go to Trent Bridge for day 2 of the England vs Zimbabwe test match.
England finished day 1 on 498/3 and further strengthened their position in the first hour on day 2. Then they declared. Now, no one ever really expected this test match to be that much of a contest, but it was a lovely sunny day and we were certainly going to see a full rain-uninterrupted day’s play.
Not long before noon the Zimbabwe openers, Bennett and Ben Curran emerged to take on England’s 560-odd. Three hours 49 minutes later 21-year-old Bennett was out. He’d scored 139 runs off 143 balls – almost a run a ball and only in the previous half hour had he slipped below scoring a run a ball. And within that score of 139, some 26 boundaries – a mix of the thunderous, sledgehammer type and the deft, more exquisite. The crowd rose as one and applauded Bennett from the field. A cricketing star in the making.