BY WOSSENSEGED ASSEFA
In recent times our country and many other African countries have seen an increase in sports betting franchises. Many people aspire to win lots of money from these places, and hope that they could change their lives with what they won. Betting does change lives and for the majority, it changes it negatively.
In 2001, a man in England landed a £500,000 windfall after placing 30p on a bet with odds of 1.6 million to one. This is equivalent to winning almost 27,000,000 birr on a bet of 16 birr. Stories like this motivate punters (people who place bets) to place more bets in hopes of winning big, and this added to the thriving love that many Ethiopian youths have for sports, helps to build the market base need for the franchises to make profit and function.
On top of this, the justification that it brings more jobs and the fact that the government earns money from taxing the franchises seems to encourage and facilitate it in our country. However, the effects lay hidden and are only truly revealed under a careful examination.
Sports betting is a form of gambling that entails placing a wager, also known as a bet, on the outcome of a sporting event. The primary intent of sports betting is to win additional money. With the exception of spread betting, ‘draw no bet’ wagers and a few other examples, a bet will have two possible outcomes.
Either you win a profit based on the bookmaker odds, or you lose your wager. So, if I place a bet and predict the correct outcomes, I will get a prize of my initial bet times the bookmakers odds. One of the major negative effects of gambling is that it can become highly addictive. Gambling can stimulate the brain’s reward system much like drugs or alcohol can, leading to addiction.
If you have a problem with compulsive gambling, you may continually chase bets that lead to losses, hide your behavior, deplete savings, accumulate debt, or even resort to theft or fraud to support your addiction (Mayo Clinic).
When people become addicted to gambling, or to drugs, these wanting and liking systems are no longer intertwined. The wanting remains constant, but the feeling of liking what we get is reduced. The addicted person needs to engage in more of the behavior or the drug to get the same pleasure. The addiction begins when people start losing money (most people lose money on gambling!) and are compelled to earn it back by playing again.
This then leads to a cycle of placing bets and losing until eventually, the punter starts selling assets and valuables to get cash for betting while not having enough for necessities.
The problem further intensifies if the punter has a family that is dependent upon their provision. In 2016 in New York, United States a Wall Street executive admitting to defrauding family, friends and others out of $100 million to feed his gambling habit. Betting/gambling addiction affects individuals in many ways it robs them of healthy relationships, eats up their financial reserves, takes them down a spiral of legal problems, makes them perform poorly at their jobs leading to losing their jobs, and even makes them suicidal in some cases.
However, loss isn’t the only contributing factor even winning can keep punters hooked in hopes of winning more. There are several stories of gamblers who won millions in return money but lost everything back to gambling.
This leads us to the grim reality that in any form of betting the franchise is the one making the most profit, or in other words the house always wins. A sports betting franchise is a business, not a charitable organization throwing free money away. Like any other business, it has a business model in place designed to ensure its profitability.
No matter which bets you decide to place, the odds of you winning money from the franchise is lower than the odds of the franchise winning money from you. That’s because all odds are designed to profit the franchise, lowering the chances of winners and payouts happening. Common sense suggests that if gambling at casinos is attractive for many people, it is because it offers an opportunity to win money (Dow Schüll, 2012).
Of course, a “big win” is rare, but the random component behind most games and the publicizing of big winners lets people believe that the chance of winning a lot is not so unlikely.
The expectation of winning and the imagination of winning big releases dopamine into our system making us feel warm, fuzzy and excited. “I wanted to gamble all the time,” one former addict recalled to Scientific American in 2013. “I loved it — I loved that high I felt.” The high is created by the expectation of the win. In reality, however very few people really win.
Another subtle but impactful negative effect of gambling is that it discourages hard work by providing easy cash-out. When a person is caught up in gambling, they run into a situation that creates a strong socioeconomic disorder and slowly pushing them towards bankruptcy and maybe even a life of crime. What once was a value-adding member of society now becomes a bankrupt person unable to sustain himself and living of others.
At an individual level, this situation would at least create a sense of consideration at most a feeling of sympathy for that individual. However, when taken in terms of the country’s economy this leads to substantial loss since the individual seen earlier is multiplied by thousands of other addicts and the family members affected by the addiction. As mentioned earlier the punter will not be able to sustain his family and his kids may lack the finances to get educated and a generation of uneducated children living in a dysfunctional home come into society because of the addiction.
In a study conducted in our neighboring country Kenya, it has been made known that gamblers feel depressed down or irritable. Gamblers lose interest in usual activities, their sleep has changed (for example they have problems falling asleep or staying asleep, or they sleep too much) and their investment pattern has been greatly affected as they divert assets to gambling.
The study established that gamblers have borrowed money to gamble and have not paid it back. It also found that gamblers have lost time from work or other commitments due to time spent on gambling and they spend 8-12 hours in a day gambling.
The study concludes that addicted gamblers report higher than average incidences of job loss and those who remain in work report lost productivity through lateness, non-attendance and preoccupation with gambling. This clearly shows how gambling can discourage hard work and creates individuals chasing after the wind while leaving everything that mattered to them behind. In terms of our country betting is normally practiced by young members of society.
The betting franchises dictate that no one under the age of 18 can bet while the age itself can be a point of argument there are many reports of underage members of society playing and biting the hook of betting.
These deceptive and subtle impacts are normally left unseen and unmonitored in our country. Since the gambling/betting franchise generates money at face value it is thought to positively help the economy, however when put under scrutiny we see that only a few benefit from the profits, many lose their money, family and lives. In our country, this is further intensified by the lack of awareness and the limited regulation of the government of the franchises.
The government should either stop the franchises which would be the better option or put strong regulation on the franchises and help raise awareness in our society about gambling and it’s negative effects.
The Ethiopian Herald January 22/2021
