Why are Gambling Machines Addictive? Panorama

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.