Latest in: Opinião

Alguém terá de pagar a conta de todos aqueles minutos de publicidade televisiva – os tais jovens animadíssimos, que não deverão ficar tão animados quanto isso quando fazem contas às suas perdas. Depois de uns quantos anos mais afastado dessas lides, recentemente voltei a ver um par de jogos...

A nova lei do jogo de Macau foi aprovada, assinalando os pedidos de propostas para os casinos e a reabertura dos concursos. As restrições de viagem e os bloqueios na China continental e em Macau ao longo de dois anos significaram perdas dramáticas e contínuas nos casinos. Enquanto destaca...

Sabe que está em sérios problemas quando um dos principais boletins informativos da sua indústria debate o “lado bom” do encerramento: “Os encerramentos dos casinos de Macau proporcionam algum alívio em relação à queima de dinheiro”. (Asia Gaming Brief) Os casinos de Macau têm tão poucos jogadores, de facto,...

As lojas têm uma semana para recorrer após não terem convencido as autoridades de Bremen de que não são fachadas para o crime. Bremen está a planear fechar todas as suas lojas de apostas depois de o Senador do Interior ter dito que os seus proprietários não conseguiram convencê-lo...

Com as exigências de jogo mais seguro a continuarem a crescer em todos os países europeus, é importante que as empresas de jogo levem a sério a sua representação na sociedade para garantir que o setor tenha um futuro sustentável. Se não o fizermos, a sociedade responderá e uma...

A menos que esteja familiarizado com a indústria do jogo, poderá não conhecer muito sobre Macau. Anteriormente era uma colónia portuguesa, esta vibrante cidade transformou-se nos últimos anos para se tornar a capital mundial do jogo. Por si só, Macau gerou mais receitas provenientes do jogo de fortuna ou...

Kevin McKenna Opinion After a while, you find yourself getting accustomed to the absurd chauvinism of English commentators at World Cups. The BBC and ITV seem to vie with each other every four years to provide the most asinine and uninformed coverage of this global extravaganza. There are 32 nations...

Editorial – Opinion The World Cup starts next week, a truly global festival that unites bookmakers all around the planet in pursuit of gamblers’ cash. Whichever team wins on the pitch, the firms which advertise on the virtual hoardings all around it and in the commercial breaks will profit. Sports gambling is...

Adam Bradford Opinion have been dubbed the crack cocaine of betting, having destroyed thousands of lives over the past few years and become the topic of heated public debate. On Thursday, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport finally ruled that the stakes on the highly addictive machines...

Nils Pratley Opinion t was New Labour, during its brief and bizarre flirtation with “supercasinos” as a tool for urban regeneration, that gave the green light to fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs) on the high street. The only generous interpretation is that ministers didn’t know what they doing when they set maximum...

Sam Wolfson Opinion There is not a lot of subtlety in the games they design for fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs). In one, Goddess of the Amazon, badly rendered illustrations of big-breasted women in leather underwear point you towards slot machines – you literally have to tap on their crotch...

Editorial – Opinion The fine of £6.2m levied on the bookmakers William Hill today by the Gambling Commission represents a small victory in the constant struggle against the abuses of a system that lends itself to exploitation. In this case, the firm was found to have been astonishingly trusting about where...

Spain and France have taken another step toward shared online poker liquidity following the official publication of Spain’s new regulations. On Monday, Spain’s Official State Gazette published the resolution signed on December 29 by Spanish gaming regulator Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego (DGOJ) authorizing online poker liquidity sharing between state-licensed...

Alex Hern Opinion In a tale of gambling addiction posted to Reddit shortly before Christmas, the numbers were as shocking as they were unsurprising. First the anonymous addict frittered away $200 (£149), in November 2016. Then $700 more, later that month. Then $300, $400, $1,500 … eventually, by December 2017, a credit...

Editorial | Opinion The worlds of late childhood and early adolescence are absorbing, often overwhelming, and at best partially accessible to the adults orbiting them. So it is shocking, but not perhaps surprising, to discover that around 25,000 11- to 16-year-olds are problem gamblers, according to new research. Another 36,000...

  Nils Pratley on finance | Business Ladbrokes Coral’s bosses will try to sound cheerful about the prospect of being taken over by GVC Holdings, the company behind Sportingbet and Foxy Bingo. But, on the long view, this deal would be a corporate humiliation. Ladbrokes is one of the oldest names in...

    Dawn Foster | Opinion When I first moved to the capital in 2010, I worked in Newham, in east London. It looked similar to the places I’d grown up and where I lived while at university, but for one difference: the number of betting shops seemed obscene. I’d pop...

Adam Bradford | Opinion On Tuesday, the long-awaited report into the gambling machines known as fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs) and social responsibility was released by the government. In 2014, my father David, an accountant, was sent to prison for fraud. He had stolen £50,000 from his employers to fund his gambling addiction....

  Greg Wood | Sport betting When the department for digital, culture, media and sport finally announced a range of options for the new maximum stake in fixed odds betting terminals on Tuesday, the most interesting alternative was arguably the one that wasn’t there. The stake limit could be halved to £50, cut...

Editorial | Opinion The record fine levied on 888, an online gambling company, today, is a sign that Britain has a gambling problem. A technical failure meant that 7,000 customers who had chosen to bar themselves from the firm’s betting terminals were still able to gamble. The public is starting...

Victoria Coren Mitchell | Opinion The government’s failure to clamp down on fixed-odds betting terminals must be down to stupidity or corruption and I’m not sure which of those I hope it is. Which is better? Idiots or crooks? It would make a good parlour game. It’s possible that I’ve spent...