Former Liverpool footballer Dominic Matteo is set to speak to League of Ireland players about the dangers of gambling.
Matteo, who played for Liverpool between 1993 and 2000, explains in his autobiography how he ran up over £1 million in gambling debts. Now, as part of a training programme for footballers, coaches, match officials and Football Association of Ireland staff, Matteo will lead sessions on preventing gambling harm.
Other speakers include former Wrexham striker Marc Williams and ex-Ireland Under-21 international Scott Davies, who is now Slough Town’s player-manager.
‘Explosion’
Writing in The Sunday Independent recently, award-winning journalist Richard Curran criticised the “glacial pace” of gambling regulation amid “endless delays in the political and legislative system”.
He noted that the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland has only just started the mandatory licensing of firms, “close to 20 years after the first review of casino betting and betting licencing was commenced by the Department of Justice in 2006”.
“Successive governments have failed people as the gambling spend in Ireland has exploded to an estimated €9.8bn per year. It is implausible that the same companies breaking the rules in a regulated industry in the UK operate much more benignly here where there aren’t really legal requirements, as regulation has been voluntary.”
‘Onslaught’
Last October, the Central Bank of Ireland reported that gambling spending has been “spiking” year-on-year by over 20 per cent.
Responding to the figures, the Irish Examiner commented: “The dizzying onslaught of advertisements offering free bets, free spins, and various other incentives appears to be everywhere. Many of those advertisements frame gambling as simultaneously an enjoyable communal activity as well as a solitary, furtive pursuit, but such contradictions do not obscure the common goal: To get people to gamble.
“The Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland has difficult challenges ahead, given the way gambling has wormed its way into the heart of Irish society, but it deserves all the support it needs for this necessary work.”
The regulator is set to be equipped for managing legal enforcement actions, such as criminal prosecutions, towards the end of this year.
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