A Scotland internationalist has banned himself from a bookies chain after becoming addicted to high-stakes slot machines.
The football player signed up to a voluntary scheme run by Ladbrokes, which provided fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs) in hundreds of its branches.
The machines - routinely referred to as the crack cocaine of gambling - are increasingly controversial with the UK Government under pressure to reduce their stakes.
The player’s self-imposed ban was revealed by the Sunday Mail this weekend. The paper decided not to name him but said he was valued at £8m. A source told the tabloid: “He had a problem with gambling for a while but the penny appears to have finally dropped. He was losing a fortune on these high-stakes machines and it was badly affecting him.
“Everyone hopes the self-exclusion arrangment is a step in the right direction.” It is unders ood the man was suffering mood swings.
Labrokes has distributed the man’s name to its branches and asked that he not be served for 12 months. The self ban comes after former Rangers player Joey Barton was banned from football by English authorities for 18 months for betting on the outcome of 1000 games.
Gambling firms have a huge hold on Scottish and English football, with substantial shirt sponsorship deals. Ladbrokes sponsors the Scottish league.Campaigners are worried by their influence.
Former footballer Kevin Twaddle, who lost £1m gambling, said: “Scottish football is essentially run by gambling companies. How can it be big on gambling awareness when they are sponsored by all the major bookies?” Rangers and Celtic both have shirt sponsors from bookmaking firms.
The Evening Times last year revealed Glasgow punters alone gambled £1bn a year on FOBTS.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here