Why i hate the latest Betfair Advert

In a perfect world, people that love sport would watch it purely for enjoyment or for the way it makes them FEEL.  To those that don’t understand or like sport this is difficult to describe – but it’s the way I feel about the Champions League and what used to be known as the European Cup: a buzz, an inner feeling that something magical or incredible may be about to happen.  But with the influx in recent years of the internet, the temptation to gamble on the sports we love (or any sport for that matter) is more constant than it has ever been: from Bet 365’s Ray Winstone almost sinisterly imploring us to ‘Bet in-play…now,’ to the often hilarious Chris Kamara / Tiziano Crudeli ads for Ladbrokes, there is literally no escaping the constant urge to make sport ‘more interesting’ by staking some of your hard-earned money on it.

Even on Facebook recently, I listed my ‘Favourite Sports Teams’, amongst other things, as something to enhance my homepage.  Little did I know that a well-known Gambling Site would use this information to offer me a free £10 bet on Watford FC (my team) on my HOME page, complete with a link.  I didn’t input my information for this reason.  I did it to let people know what Sports Teams I support, and to get a bit of my beloved Watford on my page.  So what if I happened to be a recovering Gambling addict?  Would it be fair to show me these constant reminders – on a website that has nothing to do with Gambling – that a bet is just a click away?  It is getting too much in my opinion – the people that want to bet will find a way to, regardless of the advertising; but for a recovering addict who is trying to do anything to take his mind off Gambling, or someone on the edge, who thinks he or she may have the beginnings of a problem, these types of links and offers can be dangerous.

Personally, I only gamble online and only on certain sports, certain events.  My site of choice is Betfair, a site that allows you, on their Betting Exchange, to Back or ‘Lay’ (backing against something, e.g. backing a certain team NOT to win) against another Betfair user who wants to stake on the OPPOSITE result.  This has always seemed like a much more sensible way to gamble to me: after all, now I didn’t have to ‘beat the odds’ that the Betting Site had set, I just needed to be smarter than another gambler.  (This also makes very sound and reliable business sense from Betfair’s point of view too - because now for every winner on their exchange there is also a loser; they make their profits not from those customers that lose, but from the 5% commission they take from every win).

    And then there is ‘in-play’ betting.  The great thing about this fairly new innovation is that now you can win money by NEVER BEING RIGHT.  Yes, you read that correctly: you can win by just putting on the right bets at the appropriate time, and you can come away a winner, no matter what the outcome is.
    This is where the latest Betfair advert comes in.

 Betfair, like all popular Betting Sites and Shops in the UK, promote ‘responsible gambling.’  This means that they encourage Gambling only for fun, for leisure, and only with money you can afford to lose; that they supply information for those who think they may have a gambling problem, and to direct them to the appropriate help should they need it – such as through Gamcare or Gamblers Anonymous.  This is why I am completely dumbfounded as to what Betfair have done with their latest advert – that the main protagonist, to me (and I have many years’ experience of working in the Gaming industry), shows many of the traits of a problem gambler, and Betfair themselves, through the way they have shot the advert, seem completely cool with this.

    The advertisement starts with a ‘regular’ guy in the pub: a snippet of Clive Tyldesley commentary tells the viewer that a football match involving Manchester United is on the TV.  Our man’s fingers drum nervously on the table as he reaches for his phone to look at Betfair’s latest in-play odds of the match he is watching.  For a start, there is something about betting on your phone when you’re ‘out and about’ that smacks of a dependence on Gambling, in my opinion; but that’s another story.
    ‘You’ve backed United to win,’ says the voice-over after the TV commentary has informed us that they lead 3-1; ‘do you cash out?’ the voice teases us, ‘or don’t you?’ 
    On closer inspection, the cash-out option is offering our man a £7.18 profit on a £20.00 bet, when the maximum he is hoping to win is £8.00 if he doesn’t cash out (and if United win); he decides not to cash out, as the camera cuts to his anxious-looking, staring eyes.
    As Everton (Man. United’s opponents) pull a goal back to make it 3-2, he runs his hands through his hair; again, we get the ‘Do you / Don’t you?’ voice-over.  As United put another away to restore their two-goal cushion, the scene cuts back to the crowd of people watching the game, and although everybody else in the pub seems to be enjoying the game, our Betfair Gambler’s enjoyment looks strained.  We see a close-up of the nervous look on his face and the sweat building on his brow; we get a thumping heartbeat sound effect, indicating his increased stress, tension and anxiety.
    As his finger hovers over the Cash Out option again (showing the same option to take a £7.18 profit), I’m thinking: surely if the stress is THAT GREAT, you would take the guaranteed profit at this point – is eighty-two pence really worth getting uptight about – especially when you could be enjoying the game and a relaxing beer with your friends?   But obviously, he doesn’t.
    Then, at 4-3, the camera points down at him, seeming to focus on him alone, indicating – to me at least – that this is how he feels: alone in the world.  All this to the repeated thumping heartbeat.  Now he DOES decide to Cash out, for the lesser profit of £4.35, from his £20.00 bet (rather than running the risk of losing his whole £20.00 should Everton equalise).
    As he cashes out, it is worth noting that the director decides to show this part with the pub completely deserted but for him; I have no idea what this is supposed to signify, other than – once again – that he is all alone in more ways than one.  When, inevitably, Everton do equalise to show us that his Cash out was wise (this was the genuine Premier league match from the back end of the 2011-12 season that ended 4-4), his buddies on either side of him don’t seem too impressed, but he has a little fist clenching celebration to himself; to me this indicates, not for the first time in this ad, that Gambling online is a solitary hobby, rather than a social one – for although he is able to punt at the pub, nobody is sharing in his pain and joy.
    My point is this: that with the increased popularity of Sports Gambling, online and otherwise, this will inevitably lead to an increased number of addicts.  This is NOT a nice situation to be in.  It is one that can wreck lives, cause severe depression and desperateness.  I appreciate that a very high percentage of people DO enjoy a punt purely for the fun of it, or bet because they have a ‘fancy’ for a certain team on a particular day.  Those people do not usually get into this situation; but Betfair, and other Gambling companies, if they are genuinely going to take an interest in the wellbeing of their customers, need to take a look at how they promote, and advertise their sites and services.  There is a fine line between caring for your customers or coming across as hypocritical. 
    This advert, when you get down to it, is one that does not show a customer having a pleasant Gambling experience.




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An Amusing Scene in the Library

A few days ago I was at the main library in the nearest city to where I lived; I didn’t have the internet at home so I was planning to use the web for an hour.  The library was busy so I had to pre-book – I got given my computer number and the time allocated for me to use it which was around forty minutes away at 4.15pm.  To kill time I perused the bookshelves then sat and read a newspaper; when the time got near I climbed the stairs to the first floor where the computers were.

    I made my way over to my terminal and the monitor read: ‘Time left: 2 minutes, 7 seconds’ in large white figures and it was counting down each second.  I would just have to wait another couple of minutes.  Sitting right in front of the computer, side-on to it and facing each other, were a couple, probably in their late-sixties.  They were extremely grim and dirty-looking.  The man was wearing a thick grey jumper and warm-looking green coat even though we were indoors and it was a sunny and warm day.  The few hairs he had clinging to the top of his head were dark and extremely greasy-looking; they were swept back to the top of the back of his head into a kind of knot but then the hair spread out again to the lower part of his head – but instead of naturally flowing down to a stop or being neatly trimmed, it stopped in a sharp square well short of his neck.  He looked utterly ridiculous.  The woman, who was sitting directly in front of my monitor, was extremely fat and ugly-looking with thick, tape-repaired glasses.  She had a few warts on her face and single grey hairs sprouting out from under her nose and on her chin.  They clearly weren’t using the computer but I wasn’t going to move them out of the way until the time ran out; but then, as it got to under a minute to my turn the woman delved into a Tesco carrier bag and pulled out some sandwiches wrapped in cling-film.  She passed one to her partner, opened one herself and started taking big hungry mouthfuls.

    When the countdown on the monitor got to zero it was exactly 4.15 and ‘RESERVED’ appeared on the screen.  I approached the couple and told the woman that I needed to use the computer; she just grunted, barely appearing to register me, and pointed at the screen with a mouthful of sandwich – bringing my attention to the word ‘RESERVED’.

    ‘Yes, reserved for me!’ I exclaimed.

    She grunted again and then in no particular hurry, they gathered their stuff together and disgruntledly and very slowly left the spot – her face seemed to say: “what a pain in the arse you are, could you not use a different computer?” 

 

    I pulled a chair to the screen and sat down to start my session, greeted by a sharp smell of dirt and body odour.

ZERO STAR ACCOMMODATION

I awoke to people murmuring and fidgeting about; one or two people were sitting up bleary-eyed with straggly “bed-hair”. The thing that struck me straight away was how cold it was in the room. It was probably as close to freezing as it could possibly be, indoors. I pulled my meagre bedcover and blanket around myself and curled up in a futile effort to get warm.
   As more and more people got up I felt as though I really ought to make a move to get up soon, but I felt so lethargic and so cold; I really wasn’t cut out for early mornings. I then noticed the Irish lad, Richard in the top bunk across the room, sitting up mumbling under his breath. We looked at each other and said our good mornings.
   ‘I really need to get up at some point,’ I said, still wrapped in my covers, my teeth chattering.
   ‘I tell you one thing we need’, said Richard in his strong Irish accent, not moving from his sitting up position; ‘a fecking heater!’

   I think I may have been the last of the twenty into the shower that morning. As I made my way there, Richard was coming back the other way, his hair soaking wet and looking white in the face; he was visibly shaking and tight from the cold.
‘Nice shower?’ I enquired.
‘Jesus…you wouldn’t get this for fecking murder,’ he said, ‘I’ve never been so fecking cold in all me life,’ before his walk quickened back to the room.
   I then endured less than five minutes of freezing cold water that supposedly went under the guise of a shower.

FOOTBALL AS BEAUTY - Milan vs Barcelona '94

It's injury time at the end of the first half in the 1994 European Cup Final and Milan are one-nil up against Barcelona.  Rossi throws it out to Panucci, the left back.  Panucci rolls it inside to Maldini who plays it up the left wing to Massaro; Massaro tries a little dart up the left, but finds there’s no room so, shielding the ball carefully, comes back, rolls it back to Panucci.  It’s played across the defence, Maldini to Galli; Galli plays a lovely high ball out to the right, ten yards inside the Barcelona half to Savicevic, who skilfully touches it back to Boban…Boban, first time, just opens his foot up, gives it back…Savicevic, delighted, checks inside with beautiful quick feet and runs towards the edge of the Barca penalty area then plays a back-heel that’s so subtle you don’t know he’s done it until it’s at Boban’s feet.  Boban rolls it coolly out right to Tassotti supporting from the back, Tassotti shapes to cross but just rolls it back inside to Boban.  Boban looks up and drifts it out to the left to Donadoni – and this is where the move comes alive – Donadoni, with absolutely classic and precision wing play, teases the defender, waits for him to commit, then just pushes it past in a split second, so beautifully: the ball holding up in the turf as if by divine providence of what is to come.
    He runs towards goal about two yards from the by-line, takes two touches, looks up, and then with the outside of his right foot, rolls it behind the farthest two forward – both marked – but invitingly back to Massaro, who only has to stand on his right foot and swing his leg at it from fifteen yards out, and it flies into the opposite corner beating Zubizaretta who is left flailing. Absolutely beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful football.
    Fifteen passes from the goalkeeper to a beautiful goal – and Barcelona never had a sniff of the ball. This is a world-class team that destroyed a Manchester United side that won the double, four-nil, and Milan – in turn – have destroyed them.

     Less than two minutes into the second half, and the game is over.  The ball gets floated up by Albertini…the Barcelona defender loiters on the ball; Savicevic just nicks it carefully but cleverly off the defender’s toe, then launches the most beautiful left foot volley over Zubizaretta’s head and into the net.  It is just fantastic: a moment of pure opportunistic genius.

     When Romario heads thin air five minutes from the end with the score at 4-0, Barcelona’s misery is truly complete.

"COWBOY MIKE"

‘Man, I haven’t told you about Cowboy Mike…did I tell you about Cowboy Mike?  No I didn’t…man!

    ‘We were in this Bar in San Francisco - a few of us from the hostel - and it’s like, this Sports Bar…so we go in, have a couple of drinks or whatever, then we fancy a game of darts; we get some arrows from the bar and we start playing but then straight away, these two couples come up…they’re like, these two middle-aged American guys and their Japanesy looking girlfriends, or wives or whatever. 

    ‘Anyway, they’re really boring, you can tell straight away.  One of them is this guy called Mike and the other is this, I can’t remember his name but he kind of had a Michael Bolton mullet going on, you know…receding at the top and sort of curly and long at the back, but it wasn’t cool I’ll tell you that much.  Anyway, they’re giving it the big one, saying they play for the State at darts or something and they beat everyone in the bar regularly, so we challenge them to a game – and we’re terrible by the way – so me and my mate are playing this Mike and the Michael Bolton guy at doubles. 

    ‘So I’m chalking the names up, and I put ‘Mike’ down, then I’m asking the other guy for his name…so he tells me it and I’m chalking it up, when Mike says, ‘Actually, my friends call me “Cowboy Mike”’ and I just turn and look at him…I stare at him and I’m trying to get it into my head that he was telling me I’d made a mistake – that I shouldn’t have just written ‘Mike’ on the board but “Cowboy Mike”.  I tried to contain myself, tried to hold it in, but I’ve started to laugh because my mate is looking at me with this hilarious, “eyebrows up” expression on his face; I turn around back to the board quickly, then methodically rub out “Mike” and put “C.M.” in inverted commas.

    ‘Then we’ve started playing and me and my mate are struggling to keep straight faces; and they were shite at darts!  They were slightly better than us, but you could tell they were no good; their throwing styles were crap, especially Cowboy Mike.  Throughout the whole game we were saying things like: ‘Your turn Mike…I mean ‘Cowboy,’ and laughing and he didn’t even get the joke…didn’t get that we were taking the piss…he just kept playing and smiling, and his wife didn’t get it either, she just stood there like a lemon and laughed and smiled when they got anything over like, about thirty, as if she was really impressed with her man’s darts prowess, unaware that her husband was full of shit and had told us that he was an All-California Pro or whatever; and his buddy - the whole time we were playing - never once called him ‘Cowboy Mike’.

    ‘Afterwards we were like, “Yes, you have lots of friends…and they all call you ‘Cowboy Mike.”

    ‘What an idiot.’

SOME OF MY FAVOURITE QUOTES - Bill Hicks Special

Here are some of my favourite quotes by, or about the late American comedian Bill Hicks.

These would all obviously be better delivered by the man himself, but enjoy!

'I've been with the same girl for five years now, so I finally popped the question: "Why are we still seeing each other?"'

'They lie about marijuana.  Tell you pot-smoking makes you unmotivated.  Liiie.  When you're high, you can do everything you normally do, just as well, you just realise it's not worth the f---ing effort.  There is a difference.'

'No one has handguns in England, not even the cops.  Now!  In England last year they had fourteen deaths from handguns.  Fourteen.  Now!  United States, I think you know how we feel about handguns.  Whoo!  I'm getting a warm, tingly feeling just saying the f---ing word to be honest with you.  23,000 deaths from handguns.  But there's no connection...and you'd be a fool and a communist to make one.  There's no connection between having a gun and shooting someone with it, and not having a gun and not shooting someone.  There've been studies made, and there is no connection at all there.  Yes.  It's absolute truth.  You know, fourteen deaths from handguns - probably American tourists, too...'

'A lot of things are changing, and they all seem to be stemming from the return of a gentleman named Bill Hicks.  A man who I can't figure out if he is near enlightenment or a black beast.  I don't know.  He's a genius and a putz and a child and a master all in one.  And with the return of him on Wednesday, my life has been shaken like thunder.  I have experienced every emotion and every shade of feeling since he's been back.  Elation, joy, bliss, anger, depression, awe, love, hate, wonder, laughter, disappointment, fear, pain, have all passed through me.  And generally all at the same time.'
Dwight Slade's journal, American Scream, The Bill Hicks Story (by Cynthia True).

'It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom.  Keep that in mind at all times.'

'He screamed into the microphone.  His vision of a machine-gun-toting Jesus was positively malevolent.  He acted out violent, bloody fantasies toward his former girlfriend, an assortment of politicians - even the Reagans' dog.  he unearthed new, unimagined lows in bad taste...This is not a warm person.  But is he funny?  Oh yes.'
News and Observer reporter Michael Hetzer on Bill Hicks