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The new games room in the Vitorian neighborhood of Judimensiondi opened two years ago and since then, the youth assembly of the neighborhood saw with anguish the tendency to start seeing "normal" betting houses.

In Vitoria-Gasteiz there are more than 30 sites of the same nature and the young people of the Judimendi neighborhood showed from the beginning their concern about the damage they can cause among the citizens. To this end, a report was prepared and a leaflet explaining the damage that the game can cause was distributed among the neighbors.

In recent months they have also continued to denounce that "the game jeopardizes the neighborhood life in Judimendi" and to continue this claim, they have announced a demonstration in support of the festivities of the neighborhood.

They want to denounce that, in addition to generating addiction and dependence among neighbors, it also negatively affects the businesses in the area. The assembly explained that it is "the one that exploits the workers of the plant". They are also accused of "unfair competition" because of low prices.

They called for a demonstration on 23 June, at 7:00 p.m., from Sefarad Square to show that these negative impacts are not admissible and do not want "a company that condemns the neighborhood to death".

City Hall Study

Concerns about the sponsorships of sports professionals, the excessive use of television and online ads and other factors around betting houses are increasingly evident in different social areas.

In recent months, various measures have been taken against this "dangerous" business from different sectors. For example, ETB has announced that it will not publish betting houses as of 2020, and 86% of the Real Sociedad partners were in favour of not including betting houses ads on t-shirts.

In the Basque Country, steps are also being taken in this regard, and it is precisely on 30 May that the City of Vitoria-Gasteiz published the report entitled "Young people and gambling, a challenge to be faced".

Between November 2018 and May 2019, the City Hall, with the collaboration of the Asajer association, has developed a study with the objective of reflecting on the situation and thus being able to "propose future actions".Researchers Irati Sierra, Iñigo Pérez and Héctor García de Salazar have worked for six months for young people to investigate the reasons that lead them to "play". In addition, we also wanted to make measurements according to the participants' ages, neighborhoods and other conditions.

The conclusions of the report reflect that the data collected for Vitoria-Gasteiz are slightly lower than those indicated by the results of other similar reports. However, they find it worrying that many of those involved in the game have started to perform this activity as minors.

There are no significant differences between the different neighborhoods. But they wanted to make it clear that, while before the crisis the reason for "having a good time" had prevailed, today "the number of players has increased to make money".It is also noteworthy that among adolescents, who have seen their parents playing at home, they have an even more obvious tendency to start betting. In general, it is a problem that can affect anyone, although there may be some differentiating conditions.

In the research carried out, various factors have been shown to identify the dependence that the game generates among young people and adolescents entrevistados.Entre motivations, that of "earning money" is one of the most mentioned, and in these cases sports betting is the most frequent. Feeling "in control of the situation", believing that "they have the ability to anticipate results" and thinking that they can "recover losses" are symptoms of dependence.

The prevention work is therefore considered essential in the report that has just been published and includes concrete measures such as the implementation of locking systems to prevent the play of minors, awareness-raising campaigns that promote critical attitudes and help to break prejudices, the recognition of the contextual factors of adolescents or the measurement of positive messages transmitted by advertising and the problems it may generate.