CNBC – In an age of austerity, the appeal of making a quick buck often sees people turn to gambling. But in the U.K., there are increasing calls for a certain type of gaming machine – which some critics have dubbed the “crack cocaine of gambling” – to be banned.
Fixed-Odd Betting Terminals (FOBTs), also known as B2 machines, allow gamblers to play games such as roulette at high-speed and with relatively high-stakes in their local betting shops. There are currently almost 33,400 of these machines in the 9,112 betting shops across the U.K.
A punter can feed a maximum of £100 ($163) into the machine per go, and – with one roll of the roulette wheel lasting just 20 seconds – could potentially lose this amount almost straight away.
It’s not just ordinary punters who find this gambling enticing; the betting business does too. According to the Gambling Commission, the U.K.’s betting regulatory body, each of these machines made an average weekly profit of £825 ($1,342) in 2012, up from £760 ($1,237) in 2011.
Last year, the machines contributed £1.5 billion ($2.4 billion) to the gross gambling yield (the total value of the betting stakes, minus players’ winnings) of the industry, which stood at £6.2 billion ($10.09 billion).
