Friday, March 02, 2007

Wanna make a bet? How about a wager that gamblers would get better odds from
legal sports books in Nevada than from Canada's provincially sponsored Sport
Select lottery? Well, don't take the bet. The fact is, Las Vegas pays much
better on its sports bets than the Alberta-sponsored lottery, according to
an in-depth report into sports and gambling by Journal writer Curtis Stock.
In the past fiscal year, Sport Select returned just 53 per cent of the money
bet on sporting events. Meanwhile, in Vegas, bookmakers paid out 94.5 per
cent of the gambling dollars they took in, which made for a lot more winners
and a lot fairer wagers. The government defends those odds, saying Sports
Select is just for fun: recreational gambling, they like to call it, as if
it's like a visit to a museum or a night's stay at a provincial park. So the
amateur doesn't need good odds because, well, he's an amateur? How is that
fair? That argument also ignores the fact that so-called recreational
gamblers enticed by government ads to "Get in the Game" can also turn into
problem gamblers. Alberta has the country's highest rate of problem
gamblers: eight per cent compared to five per cent of gamblers in other
provinces, according to a recent study by the Canada West Foundation. The
Alberta government has done a lot to take gambling into the mainstream of
society since it opened the door to video lottery terminals in the 1990s.
That's how it earns $1.4 billion in annual revenue, most of it from VLTs and
slot machines. The Journal's investigation also shows that gambling got
another boost in recent years by developing a closer connection with sports
celebrities. For instance, the Edmonton Eskimos is one of several CFL teams
with a sponsorship agreement with Bowmans International, an Internet
gambling giant. Internet gambling is becoming another form of home
entertainment, just a click of a mouse from the next bet.
Yet, those who gamble on the Internet are 10 times more likely to be problem
gamblers than those who use other forms, says new research by Robert
Williams of the University of Lethbridge. As many as 10 per cent of Internet
gamblers fall into the "at-risk" category compared to an average of 3.5 per
cent of gamblers who play the old-fashioned way. The point is this. As
gambling reaches further into all corners of society, from high school
lunchrooms to television poker in the living room to the Internet on the
family computer, there has been precious little effort to educate the public
on the social ills that accompany this activity, and on the risks of
becoming a problem gambler. There are high-profile campaigns to stop drunk
drivers, televisions ads to reach out to drug addicts, and health campaigns
to urge people to eat and drink the right foods and get enough exercise.