collection 2020
Gambling Because There is Not Much Else to Do
Why gambling disorders are increasing amongst the young people in Spain
The “plague” of gambling saloons in Spain has turned them into almost the only leisure alternative in some of the poorest areas. Gambling disorders are rising and threatening the future of the Spanish youth.
​
By Ricardo Acuña Martín
Gambling saloons per district (2014-2019), Source: City Council of Madrid, LUIS CANO/ ABC
The addictive character of gambling and the increasing betting opportunities in the most disadvantaged areas explains why gambling disorders are more common amongst people with socioeconomic problems. The sample of the clinical study coordinated by the General Direction of Gambling (DGOJ) in 2017 showed that three out of four pathological gamblers have a low or medium-low socioeconomic status. “There is a correlation between the socioeconomic aspect and the risk of developing gambling disorders. This is explained by the market moving towards wherever the demand is and by how that demand is created”, explains Perales.
​
“We treat a lot of people with economic problems. Studies about gambling support the idea of people with few resources gambling because they want to escape from their difficult situation and see in gambling their only way out”, states Diana Alonso. “However, it is dangerous to spread the idea that just poor people can develop gambling disorders. It can affect everyone. We have treated brokers and people with a high cultural level”, she clarifies.
​
Gambling against boredom
​
“I am scared of this being treated as a simple gambling disorder issue. It has a lot to do with the lack of leisure alternatives that we the precarious youth have in this country”, answers 20 years old Adán when asked live in Madrid regional television. “When one goes to a gambling saloon it is not just for gambling. One goes there to watch the Real Madrid game for free while drinking a beer for just 0,50 euros”, he tells.
​
The reality described by Adán matches with a recent FAD report that assures that gambling has become a leisure option replacing others “as going to the cinema”. “At the beginning, it was just a leisure activity with friends. We went some days, we gambled for a while...If we won we went out for dinner and if not we went home and nothing happened”, remembers José.
The problem comes when gambling becomes one of the few leisure alternatives available. And that is happening in depressed areas where young people are bored either because there is not much to do or because they do not have the money for alternative leisure options. Considering cinemas, theatres, sports centres, museums, cultural centres and libraries as alternative leisure options, the imbalance with gambling saloons in some of the poorest districts is alarming.
​
Carabanchel is the district with the fourth-lowest average income per person and the one with the most gambling establishments in the capital city (48). The same area has just 1 cinema, 3 sports centres or 0 museums for the more than 25.000 people aged 15-24 living there. In other words, Carabanchel has 3 gambling establishments for every of the leisure alternatives named above. And this reality is not different in other disfavoured areas as Usera or Puente de Vallecas.
​
The feeling of ‘not having much to do’ in these neighbourhoods exacerbates the general boredom increase amongst the youth. “It might be helpful to bring in the effect of social media, the abundance of screen time, and the effect that has had on relationships among young people, affecting on mental health, which can be closely tied to boredom”, argues Linda Caldwell, researcher at Penn State University and a true eminence in the field of leisure studies.
​
A recently published study conducted by her and other scholars reflected that the feeling of boredom have significantly increased amongst US high-school students in the last decade. “Similar results in Spain would make sense to me as leisure practices are similar. However, one should be careful because even though these practices are very similar they are also different in many ways”, Caldwell states.
Dr. Caldwell has been one of the most notable figures within an academic line of research aiming to link leisure boredom with substance abuse amongst the youth. Since the 90’s several scholars have explained how certain young people reacts against boredom by seeking arousal through risky behaviors as substance abuse that can turn into addiction problems.
​
Although all the studies on this line have been focused on substance abuse, Caldwell considers that “applying this logic to gambling makes very good sense”. “There is enough evidence of sensation seeking and escaping boredom as one of the motivation for people to gamble”, remembers Professor Perales.
​
The analogy between substance abuse and problematic gambling is evidenced in the WHO change of criteria previously mentioned and it is also backed up by the experts. “Even though it bothers the gambling industry, the comparison between drug abuse and gambling disorders seems logical to me. It activates the same brain circuits than drugs”, says Diana Alonso.
​
The lack of leisure alternatives in the most disfavoured areas of the city is creating a bored youth whose most remarkable excitement comes from a ball landing in the right number of the roulette, a last-minute goal or a horse crossing the line before the others. A generation threatened by gambling disorders in a similar way that their parents were threatened by the arrival of the heroin in Spain neighbourhoods back in the 80’s.
​
For José César Perales the relation between socioeconomic problems and pathological gambling is a matter of deprivation. “It makes sense that wherever there is a bigger socioeconomic deprivation, which includes leisure alternatives deprivation, there is also a bigger exposure to gambling”, he points out. “People react to leisure alternatives deprivation by consuming whatever they are offered”, concludes.
​
Tackling the problem
​
In recent years several neighbourhood associations and diverse social groups have demonstrated to call for a more strict regulation that ends the unstoppable spread of gambling saloons across the city. “Get the gambling saloons out our neighbourhoods”, they claim.
​
Graffiti in Madrid's Viválvaro neighbourhood "Get the crooks out of Vicálvaro"; Source: Keops28, wikimedia
Gambling was the centre of Jose’s routine for two years. What started as just another way to hang out with friends when he was 16 became a daily need that disrupted every aspect of his life. He started skipping classes at uni, lying and selling his personal belongings to get money and even his holidays were planned considering the gambling options available in the destination. “I scheduled my days based on going to gamble at some point”, admits Jose, who completely lost control in his early 20’s. “If a year and a half has around 500 days, I went to a gambling saloon at least 480. I used to call it ‘going to the infirmary’. Whenever I had a problem or I was bored it was my favourite place to go. It healed my mind as a dose for a drug addict”.
​
The reality faced by José, who lost 6.000 euros during a weekend and estimates in 40.000 his spending as a gambler, is, unfortunately, more and more common every day amongst the Spanish youth. Experts and associations dealing with this phenomena are warning of a worryingly increase in the number of young people developing gambling disorders. “The mean age of the people who comes to our association has dropped 20 years”, states Diana Alonso, a therapist working for APAL, a non-profit association that has been working in the prevention and treatment of gambling disorders for more than a decade.
​
This tendency is confirmed by Susana Jiménez, head of the pathological gambling unit of Bellvitge Hospital, pioneer in Spain. “In 2010, 5% of our patients were under 25 years of age. Now the figures have tripled and they represent the 17% of the more than 4.6000 people we treat”, she explains.
Gambling is a rising activity in Spain. According to the 2019 Annual Report of Gambling, Spanish people spent 32.382,9 millions of euros gambling, an increase of almost 25% since 2014. The online market has experienced the most impressive growth in the same period: the amount played has almost triplicated and the number of registered users in the different betting sites has gone from 637.000 to 1.5 million.
​
This growth is especially significant amongst the younger sectors of the population. The report Society and Gambling revealed that 32% of people aged between 18 and 24 had visited a gambling saloon in 2018 while just 11% did it 5 years before. Gambling is a trend even amongst those who legally cannot bet. FAD, the most important association against addictions in Spain, alerts that gamblers aged between 14 and 18 years old have increased more than 10% in the last two years.
​
The explanation seems to be simple. The more young people gambling, the more young people developing gambling disorders. However, determining what drives the youth to bet more requires a much deeper analysis, in which a lot of different factors should be taken into consideration. As Dr. Jiménez argues “a single factor is never enough to explain gambling disorders”.
​
In its extent coverage in the last couple of years, media has been successful detecting some of the main causes behind this problem: the intense and aggressive advertising featuring famous athletes and public figures with huge influence amongst the youth; the dangerous proximity between gambling saloons and educational centres or the failed access control for underage people. Nevertheless, it has almost ignored the character of gambling as a leisure alternative for young people, hardly the only one in some areas.
The gambling saloons ‘plague’
​
Walking along Marcelo Usera one can contemplate gambling saloons one after the other - 4 in less than 300 metres - and eye-catching neon signs that have transformed the street into a genuine outdoor casino. This scene in the main street of the poorest district in Madrid (Usera) is representative of the impressive proliferation of betting spots in some areas. In the Autonomous Community of Madrid the number of establishment with gambling licence has gone from 364 in 2014 to 678 in 2019, an 85% increase which is bigger when just considering betting shops that have risen by more than 150%.
​
However, the ‘plague’ has not hit every area with the same intensity. The pattern is evident: the poorest the district, the more gambling saloons. The four poorest districts concentrate 36% of the establishments with gambling licence in Madrid while just 13% of them can be found in the four richest ones.
​
From the gambling sector this unequal distribution is attributed to the logic of the market. “When you decide where to open a gambling saloon you look at your target market. And it is true that in the low and medium-low social strata is where people gambles the most” admits Marcelo Ruiz, former Finance Director of Luckia, the third biggest betting company in Spain, with 33 establishments in Madrid. “It is as if someone would say: ‘look at Loewe opening their stores in Barrio de Salamanca’ (Madrid richest neighbourhood)”, argues Ruiz, who left the gambling industry last year.
​
“The problem is that the gambling sector does not recognise that its product is addictive. From their point of view they just offer a normal leisure product as if they were Netflix”, replies José César Perales, professor and researcher at Universidad de Granada specialised in addictions and gambling disorders. Perales point is supported by the WHO that back in 2013 changed the categorization of gambling disorder from a “impulse-control disorder” to a “non-substance addiction disorder” similar to substance use disorders.
The competent authorities have partially listened to the demands and they have approved new regulation oriented to restrict gambling advertising or to increase the minimum distance between gambling saloons and educational centres. In fact, the new left coalition government in Spain has shown a special interest in tackling the situation.
However, the central administration capacity to act in this field is limited. Competences over gambling have been decentralised and transferred to the regional governments. Differences are unavoidable and in some cases, the period given to gambling companies to adapt their establishments to the new normative goes up to 10 years.
​
Leisure promotion and development is another interesting field to explore in the fight against pathological gambling. It is not just a matter of increasing the number of leisure alternatives to gambling but to adapt them to young people interests and concerns. They should be the ones taking a leading role in the design of the leisure they want to be part of. “The best way to tackle addiction problems is assuring that there are enough alternatives in the environment”, Perales remarks, alluding to successful interventions on this line to tackle alcohol abuse in some nordic countries.
​
It has been more than two years since José set foot in a gambling saloon for the last time but he believes there is still a lot of work to do. “This problem will keep growing until people are aware of it”, José complains. “It is not tolerable that during football matches half-time the only thing commented are the odds or that football teams are being sponsored by betting companies with adverts featuring famous footballers and journalists”.
​
José will never forget the day he left his debts behind. “It was a new beginning. It is beautiful to feel how you regain the confidence you completely lost”. He is cautious and aware of the fact that “a pathological gambler will always be” but everything he wants to do these days is make up for the lost time. “Now I can invite my parents for lunch, get a present for my brother’s birthday or hang out with friends without having to ask anyone for anything”, he concludes, proud of the long and tough path travelled.
About the Author
Ricardo Acuña Martín,
Spain
Richi is a journalist born and raised in the city of Madrid. I’ve been telling stories since I can remember and I truly believe in the power of journalism to change lives and give voice to the voiceless. Having lived in 4 different countries it shouldn’t be a surprise that the way I understand journalism is from a global perspective.
