"Two years ago my world fell apart when my partner took his own life." "Now Panorama is helping me investigate the gambling machines he said drove him to suicide." "It is a vicious circle, I wish I could stop and get control over." "I meet the scientist who can see inside the mind of a gambler." "We've got to get people to realise that gambling is a serious disorder." "It is not a failure of will." "It is a brain disorder which is preyed upon by the gambling industry." "I discover an industry divided over the high intensity high-stake gambling on our high streets." "I think they are immoral." "They are using numerous problems, suicides, people losing control, smashing machines up." "A danger to the staff on site." "It is just wrong." "And the former boss of one of the industry's biggest bookmakers tells me their toll on society is just too great." "There is no challenge other than a moral challenge." "What if it was one of my children who was addicted?" "How would" "I feel?" "My name is Wendy Bendel and I want people to understand that problem gambling is not just about losing money." "It's a compulsion that can destroy families." "Lee and I were together for seven years." "He wrote a confession blaming a specific type of gambling." "My main gambling focus is the machines It's quick and easy to win and to lose in a short I've been this way for so many years and keeping it to myself for so long Lee's gambling spiralled out" "of control when he started playing electronic roulette on fixed-odds betting terminals known as FOBTs." "You can find them in every betting shop in Britain." "They offer a dangerous combination of high stakes and the chance And players can lose sight of what's important." "I love and support you, Wendy, to be there for you at all times." "I know with your help I'll get through this and I will I know how lucky I am to have you in my life." "There are three quarters of a million problem or at-risk Two years ago after a heavy gambling session on a FOBT, Lee disappeared." "Later that night the police informed me that Lee had been When I phoned there and got the doctor, he told me that Lee had admitted a 20-year gambling addiction and tried to commit That was the first time I had" "a real awareness of how The day Lee was allowed home," "I found a receipt from a betting I looked at it for at least 20 minutes to make sure I wasn't crazy." "When I put it in front of him, he went, you're wrong." "Look at the time, and he point blank denied it to my face." "I thought, why after trying to commit suicide, admitting an addiction, walking out of hospital Three months later," "Lee went missing." "I texted him saying, have you gambled?" "And then I got a call from the police telling me to go home because there was a unit waiting for me, so I knew." "Lee had lost almost ?" "1,000 playing table roulette in a casino." "I was 100% adamant he would not do that to me and to the kids." "Then I had to identify his body and that was Stories like mine are making some in the gambling And that includes the former boss of one of the UK's They use profits from FOBTs to expand across Britain." "The people who know about FOBTs, who've watched and observed and researched how FOBTs are used say that they are addictive, say that they are dangerous, and all the evidence points to those studies and those comments being accurate." "The amount of money that is invested in them on an annual basis across the UK is, or should be, frightening." "FOBTs earn the industry" "?" "1.7 billion a year and that generates almost ?" "400 million in gambling duty for the Government." "I'm heading to London to find out what it is about FOBTs that makes Like Lee, Tony Franklin has been a gambler all his adult life." "He says on-screen alerts and the new rules governing maximum bets, all introduced last year, are not enough to help those My whole life centred around these machines." "I would play FOBTs at the expense of friendships, at the expense of my relationships, be it work, be it my wife, Ultimately it was my life, so you just get so immersed Look, here's four receipts" "and in the space of 59 There was only one guy in the shop anyway." "Eight minutes later I've blown the ?" "500 and I've said, And this is you going up with your card?" "Just over half an hour later I've asked for another ?" "1,000." "And then I've blown that" "?" "1,000 in 12 minutes Did you have that money in your account?" "Three-and-a-half grand in a betting shop?" "Sorry, who has three-and-a-half grand?" "It's an absolutely horrendous addiction." "Has there been times where you've gone in and you've lost that amount of money and then thought," "I can't go back, I can't tell my wife, I can't tell my family," "I'm better not being here?" "Last summer, after having lost" "?" "4,500 and not feeling able, I just collapsed and I had those thoughts for a brief moment where I thought, you know," "I would be better jumping I can't bear to think what was going through his head and the pain he must have been in to end his life." "The Association of British" "Bookmakers declined to be interviewed by me for this programme but told Panorama:" "The fixed-odds betting terminal offer a choice of games of chance, David, you'll have to explain it, because I'm new to this machine." "I asked one of Britain's top statisticians to explain the chance Well, there's already a lot of credit on the machine." "We've got ?" "170, so let's be quite high betters here and let's put It takes about 20 seconds to get an answer." "We'll put ?" "45 on this spin, and we've..." "If we'd got one of those numbers come up, we'd So they pay out 97.3% of everything that's staked, which is much better than almost any other form of Usually better than the lottery or anything like that." "So you may think that this is actually a good deal And the problem is that that return of 97%, whatever, that's fine But the problem is people can't afford to gamble long enough to get When players suddenly realise" "the scale of their losses, some take their frustration out on the machines." "FOBTs have earned a reputation for sparking violence, but the industry insists it doesn't have higher rates of crime relative Nevertheless, last year one major bookmakers chain recorded over One of the most dangerous strategies of all is to chase your losses, to increase the amount" "you're betting in order to try to recoup your previous losses." "The spread of possible losses to gains just grows David believes this promise of high returns may actually encourage But again I'm using the phrase," "I'm lucky." "I'm supposed to be a serious scientist and I start talking Wasn't a red, wasn't any of these numbers." "Watching someone like David get so absorbed made me realise that the solution to problem gambling isn't just about education." "The machine is connecting to something much deeper." "It also tells me about the numbers that have come up in the past." "In the last nine spins," "I think 29 has come up three times." "Actually those numbers are completely useless." "It's of no value whatsoever to tell you what's happened in the past." "It can't help you in your betting at all." "It is not only unnecessary information, it could very well be misleading because it might make people, including me, think that somehow there's a pattern that I could spot." "Somehow I could beat the system, beat the odds." "There is even a name for it - apophenia." "It's a great name and it means seeing patterns The spinning of the wheel, the noises, the bounces, all help to draw in the gambler but have no effect on the result." "Gamblers will argue they have the secret to make this big win that nobody else has done, even though they are losing and losing and continually chasing the money they've put in." "So are the bookies in danger of putting profits before people?" "There are a number of industries where the moral dilemma is more So the tobacco industry, the drinks industry, the food industry and the gambling industry." "None of us who've experience of working this those industries have been sufficiently strong on personalising that moral challenge and thinking about the what if." "What if it was one of my children who was addicted?" "How would I feel about how we promote our offering?" "The Association of British" "Bookmakers said:" "Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen." "No longer confined to casinos, gambling has exploded into our lives, advertised everywhere, available on every high Excluding the National Lottery, over a quarter of the adult population gambles, generating billions of pounds for the industry." "But now scientists are beginning to reveal why some people find I want you to have a seat on the scanner bed there." "I want to understand what happens inside the brain of a FOBT addict?" "We arranged for recovering gambler" "Tony Franklin to join a unique experiment by one of the world's leading experts on addiction, This will be the first time anyone has played something similar to a fixed odds betting terminal from inside a MRI scanner." "The professor says it will reveal what's happening in Tony's brain Can I spend it all on the first spin?" "Gambling addiction is not a failure of will." "It is a brain disorder which is preyed upon by Honestly I can feel my heartbeat rising just by looking Once you become addicted it is very, very hard to stop because you have changed your brain - addiction is a brain that has changed to become entrained" "to the desires of the gambling." "We are going to start the roulette tasks, Tony." "The team had written a computer programme for Tony, giving him three of his favourite bets to choose from and a fictional ?" "1,000 credit." "They want to see how his brain responds to gambling and compare how it reacts to winning and losing in real time." "When Tony is doing his task and he's looking at the roulette wheel and he's making a decision to bet, parts of the brain get turned And we think that there's probably a chemical basis to that." "So, that is what we are expecting to see - the habit centres are overactive in people with gambling compared with normal When I saw Tony looking at the roulette wheel, You know, he said, "I can" "feel my heart rate going up already" Tony is a nice, intelligent, well-educated man, but yet he just turned and it was like that switch went and he didn't care." "Tony is lying in the scanner, he is looking at the roulette wheel and we've asked him to place his bet." "And the brain is not very active, maybe a little bit here he is thinking "what shall I do,"" "but it's pretty calm." "Contrast that with what happens in the next one." "Now here, this is when the wheel is spinning." "That's a huge difference from there to there." "But that's in a matter of seconds, as well, Exactly, absolutely, yes." "So here, we see the visual system - the back of the brain He is watching really closely, he wants that ball bearing to come And now we look at the emotional regions and these are This is the anterior singular" "cortex, this is the insular and these are the two areas of the brain which makes sense of emotions, they generate the emotion he is feeling" " And here we see, a very similar picture." "In fact, the only real difference between winning and anticipating is this area here, and this is an area where I think we see the sense of satisfaction." "But overall, winning, and waiting to see if you've won, the anticipation, they're both pretty much the same, and that's a really key point about gambling." "It's not just the winning that counts, it's the taking part, and the taking part repeatedly when you don't win is as activating And when you are sitting at a fixed odds terminal, you are getting this every 20 seconds," "so you can have hundreds of them. in the end it kind of becomes habitual, it becomes addictive." "The Association of British" "Bookmakers told us 99.5% of people If Professor Nutt is right, and that Tony's brain has been altered by his gambling experience, then I think I am beginning to understand why Lee, despite all the promises he made, They don't care whether they" "are winning or losing, it is just the complete hold of placing the gamble, So, that is scary because they are not even gambling for the end product, they are gambling because they don't know what else to do" "and that's habitual." "It must be hell for FOBT addicts like Lee and Tony when the opportunity to gamble is all around them." "Retail bookmakers have re-focused their business to concentrate on the High Street and now make more profit The law limits each outlet to a maximum of four FOBT machines, but with more bookmakers come more machines and local authorities If you look down here," "in just a few hundred yards you've got three Paddy Powers, three Ladbrokes, two William Hills." "Now, why are there so many" "Paddy Powers in one place?" "Because they can only have four of these terminals in one shop, It's about picking up money from people who are coming in and The Association of British bookmakers says shops only open "where there is demand" but Newham" "has asked the Government to limit the number of betting shops on the high street. 92 other local authorities are backing the call." "When councils across the country of different political hues are saying that we have got to stop this, then the Government should listen to that and do what's best for local communities." "Because across the country they are causing problems The Government can do it without changing any legislation, they could do it tomorrow if they wanted to." "The Government sets the rules and prize limits for the machines together with the Gambling" "Commission, who told Panorama..." "What the Government needs to recognise is that all addiction is not just about the individual and their vulnerabilities but also about the product and the environment which that Despite the power of addiction, some people are able Matt Zarb-Cousin, an ex-gambling" "addict, knew the FOBT machines well." "I got addicted to these machines when I was 16, so I was underage when I first went into a betting shop." "And during that time I got into thousands of pounds of debt and completely, nearly ruined my life." "I was suicidal at one point, and thankfully had support from my family to get through it, but I know how addictive these machines can be, and had they not been in betting shops I don't think I would ever" "have got addicted to gambling." "They are known as the crack cocaine of gambling?" "The crack cocaine of gambling, a label it deserves really, because they are the most addictive form of gambling and they're the form of gambling that problem gamblers lose the most on, spend the most time on," "and when you consider that between 10 and 20% of problem gamblers have contemplated suicide, It's an epidemic really of fixed odds betting terminals on the high street, turning public spaces He blames the high street bookmakers" "for deliberately trying to confuse the issue, deflecting blame away The bookies say that problem gambling is about the person and not the product, they say that problem gamblers gamble on multiple products, and that is true." "I gambled, like Lee," "I gambled on fixed odds betting terminals and I put a football accumulator on, and I bought a lottery ticket, but I lost most of my money, and spent most of my time on the fixed odds betting terminal The reputational damage FOBTs cause" "is dividing the industry." "The owner of Britain's biggest casino, someone who earns a very good living from gambling, objects to the way the book makers The betting industry is adopting a lot of the techniques that were developed by the spin doctors through the tobacco," "the lung cancer, global warming." "It's all those techniques of denial, then saying there's no evidence, then saying the evidence is inconclusive, then paying All with the intention of delaying the inevitable If you're making thirty-odd million pounds a week from a product that is insanely wrong on the high" "street, you will defend it to the Nth degree and that is what they are doing." "I could have FOBTs in here if I wanted to." "I choose not to because I think they're immoral." "And when you put in a really hard gambling product, and by that I mean high stake, fast gambling product in a very easy to access ambient gambling location like the high street, and then you try to attract customers that tend to be younger," "less educated, you've got You've got a recipe for making a lot of money, but a recipe for disaster The Association of British" "Bookmakers said:" "The former chairman of Paddy Power admits the industry's pursuit of profit has been part of the problem." "He believes that only a tightening of regulation will bring about change, and responsibility for that lies with the Government." "Essentially this comes down to tension between the needs of the industry and the needs of Government." "The greater weight, in my opinion, sits with the cabinet, sits with the people who are making decisions, or who can make decisions to shift the balance away from FOBTs being a very rich source of exchequer returns, And also, curiously," "doing financial damage because, as a result of the social damage that's been caused, there are people who are not functioning properly, not able to get to work, losing money and becoming That's why there needs to be a sea" "change, either to get rid of FOBTs all together, and that nobody has them, or that you reduce significantly what people can spend." "And you reduce that from ?" "100 max to ?" "2 or ?" "10." "It's still as addictive, but it becomes less addictive Meanwhile, gambling addicts like Tony face So, on Friday I had a relapse and lost. .." "Lost all my money playing roulette." "You can be 364 days free, but that one day when you are not strong enough it's waiting, and it got me on Friday." "Thanks to Tony and the others I've met, I now understand Lee's torment." "I hope the Government is now going to listen." "Listen to the Local Authorities and Gambling Commissions as they call for tougher regulation on FOBTS." "I'm not convinced the industry will get there on its own." "Get your pills!" "Side-effects guaranteed. 'I'm a doctor." "I believe that many common illnesses Patients want a quick fix." "We need a revolution."