Gambling Should Be Prohibited

• Gambling Should Be Illegal Essay
• Should Gambling Be Prohibited
• Gambling Should Be Illegal Pros And Cons

In conclusion, gambling should be abolished because it leads to addiction, which can cause mental and financial damage. Crimes are often associated with gambling as it is committed by problem gamblers in order to pay off debts, and that they typically reached a severe stage after a few years of playing in casino. Gambling can be a bit of fun, but if it becomes compulsive or involves significant loss of money or property, it is considered an addiction and a mental health problem. After diagnosis, treatment.

So you didn’t win the Powerball jackpot? There are still plenty of opportunities to win big in the next few weeks as Super Bowl 50, March Madness, and even the Oscars quickly approach. Many employees will likely be solicited by their fellow co-workers or supervisors to participate in office pools or football squares. However, employers should not allow conduct that is inappropriate, and in some states illegal, to interfere with business operations.

Some employers may view voluntary wagers made among employees at work as friendly competition or harmless fun. In some cases, periodic or seasonal workplace rivalries may even increase morale as different offices or different departments compete against one another for bragging rights. Working together to complete and then follow the results of a March Madness tournament bracket, for instance, may give employees who do not usually converse outside of their day-to-day job duties an opportunity to relate to each other on a different level. However, such activity could lead to division and alienation if some employees feel excluded for potentially discriminatory reasons related to race, gender, disability, religion, or other protected characteristics. Moreover, employees who already feel they are being treated unfairly may point to their exclusion from workplace wagers as further evidence of harassment, as may employees who are ridiculed by their co-workers for refusing to participate (perhaps due to their objection to gambling on religious grounds).

In addition, employees spending time during business hours to confer and place bets, as well as regularly following their picks, can lead to reduced productivity. Employees may cause interference with the company’s network operations if they stream live events on their laptops or smartphones. While the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards are held during the weekend, the March Madness tournament spans four weeks during both weekends and weekdays. Employers should be cautious not to endorse activities that will result in a significant loss of productivity.

Bookmaking is also illegal in many states. With many employees working remotely or across state lines, the risk of unknowingly committing a crime multiplies. Likewise, the creation of on-line gambling allows employees to place bets anytime, anywhere – including from their offices or cubicles. Even though workplace gambling is unlikely to result in criminal investigation or prosecution, employers should not turn a blind eye or otherwise appear to condone any illegal conduct occurring in the workplace.

In order to help minimize potential exposure to liability, employers should make it clear what is and is not permitted in the workplace. If employers conduct business in a state in which workplace gambling is illegal, employers should notify their employees that it is expressly prohibited and that employees will be disciplined if they engage in such prohibited conduct on the job. Even if employers conduct business in a state that permits private bookmaking, employers should avoid formally sponsoring pools or wagers where money will change hands. If employers choose to allow employees to participate in non-monetary wagers, employers should remind their employees that they must comply with all company policies, including those policies related to appropriate workplace conduct and the acceptable use of company resources.

Employers might also want to remind their employees of the procedures available for reporting any issues or concerns that may arise related to office pools or other workplace bets, and consider training their supervisors to monitor workforce conduct during the traditional office pool/betting season to help ensure policies are being equally and consistently applied. Finally, employers are advised to watch out for situations in which employees are excluded from or pressured to participate in office pools and other wagers. While nothing is ever a safe bet, being cognizant of the issues that can arise during betting season may increase the odds of maintaining a congenial workplace.

It’s been a major talking point for a number of months, if not years, in football.

Should teams be sponsored by betting companies?

It’s a question that balances the moral with the financial, and maybe there is no right answer: it is, perhaps, simply a question of personal opinion.

Taking the English Premier League as a guide, ten of the twenty teams in the competition were sponsored by a bookmaker or betting side during the 2019/20 season. That means that their shirts displayed the brand’s logo, while the advertising hoardings around the pitch also feature gambling-led promotional messages.

Premier League Betting Company Shirt Sponsors 2019/20

What’s the problem? Well, aside from the £350 million that the teams in question have pocketed for their efforts, there are genuine concerns that the growing visibility of betting firms in football – which attracts millions of viewers each week either at the stadium or watching on TV at home – is increasing the risk of problem gambling spreading.

This is a sweeping statement, but a high percentage of people who watch football are young and male – the most vulnerable demographic to problem gambling behaviours.

There’s two sides to every argument, of course, so let’s see if we can get any closer to answering the question of whether betting brands should be allowed to sponsor football teams either in England or abroad.

The Case for Gambling Sponsorship in Football

Few industries in the world have taken quite the regulatory kicking as gambling has in the past couple of years.

First came the crackdown on the fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs), which was arguably necessary but the reduction in maximum stake has led to millions of pounds in revenue lost and thus shop closures and unemployment.

And then came the recently announced ban on credit card betting, which will help to prevent vulnerable people from wagering more money than they can necessarily afford.

Gambling Should Be Illegal Essay

There’s no doubt about it: problem gambling needs to be tackled, and these measures help.

But the statistics suggest that some 24 million adults gamble in the UK, with 400,000 of that number identified as problem gamblers. That means around 2% of bettors are displaying problematic behaviour, while more than 23 million people are not.

There is also an argument, no matter how pithy, that for the large part gambling sponsorship in football has very little impact upon how many people bet nor how much they wager.

Flick on your TV set and you will see supermarkets advertising their alcohol offers at all times of the day, while industries closely linked to betting – such as stocks and shares – are allowed to market their products and services with seemingly little regulation to stop them.

What the gambling industry needs to do is invest more in the identification of problem gamblers, and the onus is on the bookies to play a key role in that by flagging up troubling behaviour. The Know Your Customer (KYC) verification system is at least going some way to preventing underage gamblers from joining the party.

But should we be banning gambling sponsorship in football? Many are desperate to suggest there is a cause-and-effect relationship between sponsorship and problem gambling, but is it as black-and-white as that?

The Case Against Gambling Sponsorship in Football

In recent years, there has been a complete ban on sponsorship from alcohol brands and cigarette firms in football and most other sports.

Should Gambling Be Prohibited

You can see why: both of those things can be severely harmful to an individual’s health.

Gambling Should Be Illegal Pros And Cons

Some will argue that you can enjoy alcohol in moderation, and the same theory stands for football betting too – millions of people have the odd flutter with no real consequence to their health or wellbeing.

But that would be missing the point somewhat, because gambling can be as harmful to mental wellbeing as booze and fags can be to the physical.

It’s also the targeting that is the issue. So many young people engage with football that it is dangerous for them to be so readily exposed to persuasive marketing efforts.

Also, a huge number of children also watch football on a weekly basis. This is also having an impact: a UK Gambling Commission study found that some 55,000 children aged 11-16 have what is categorised as a gambling problem, with a whopping 450,000 of kids in that age-range said to be betting ‘regularly’.

That encompasses a wide range of things, including bingo, publicly-available fruit machines and online casino gaming, but the simple fact is that too many children are being exposed to gambling at a young age at the football or via adverts on TV.

You will never completely stop underage smoking/drinking/betting – it’s almost a rite of passage for plucky youngsters, but minimising the likelihood is possible through taking sensible measures.

Gambling is an activity for people aged 18+, so why aren’t the same rules applied to this ‘adult’ activity as they are in other fields? Could TV adverts from betting firms be made to be shown after the 9pm watershed? There is already a blanket ban on advertising during football matches, so why can’t these brands get together and impose their own voluntary suspension on daytime and early evening ads?

That is a move that would surely go some way to restoring the integrity of this increasingly-damaged industry.

As for football sponsorship specifically, you wouldn’t expect Carling to sponsor the English Premier League, as it has in the past, or Benson and Hedges to have their logo emblazoned across the front of Liverpool’s shirt. Those are relic ideas of a bygone age.

Even if a complete ban on gambling sponsorship in football is impossible, surely the manner in which these messages are delivered – and the timing/location of the – has to be regulated further.

Betting sponsorship is pumping millions into the coffers of football clubs, so let’s get them investing into the infrastructure that identifies problem gambling and also helps to treat it.

There has to be some give and take, as at the minute there doesn’t appear to be much give at all.