Stewart Kenny, Gavin Finch, Harry Wilson discussed on BTV Simulcast
Automatic TRANSCRIPT
These ads. I then I knew I had to speak to myself and say, clearly, highlight our complete apocalyptic rather than just been a minor hypocrite if I continue on and I made my decision to go. So I prepared for the next board meeting and said I was going. So you've made a lot of money off the gambling industry. Now that you are raising questions about it, raising awareness about it. Are you using your own money to sort of fund anti gambling addiction treatment or initiatives? I have funded charities to do with gambling addiction. In fact, some of them refused to take my money on the basis that the money is tainted. What they asked me to do rather than put the money up front. Now, some of them I did, and I will continue to give money to, but they asked me to speak out. Stewart Kenny, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me. Western was a pleasure. I'm here with two colleagues from London, Gavin Finch is an investigative reporter for Bloomberg and Harry Wilson is a finance reporter. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Gavin and Harry, you have written this story about what you have called Britain's gambling nightmare. For those of us who aren't familiar with what's happening in the UK and gambling, could you tell us sure, so there's been a sort of explosive growth of online betting in the UK in the last decade, particularly habit forming casino games like slot machines and roulette sort of virtual casinos. These are extremely lucrative games for gambling companies, but not for punters, who are losing on average about 14 billion pounds a year. I think it was over the last four or 5 years. And when we say explosive, that the growth in these games that's gone from 27 million pounds and 2014 to more than 4 billion pounds last year. And so this is online gambling. This isn't going down in the corner to the little gambling shopper going to a formal casino, but this is all taking place in apps that you use on your