More and more sports teams put the logo of betting houses on their t-shirts, especially football clubs, but not only them (“Oxygen for the Bilbao Basket: The RetaBet will support the club for 10 years,” we have just read in the newspapers). It is becoming more and more normal that in sports broadcasts the media interspersed ads inviting us to wager. If in our villages we see a site in works, they may open a new game room. To this we have to add that almost all of us carry a potential slot machine in our pocket, camouflaged on mobile phones. Once you sign up on a website and start playing, it is very likely that no escape will be found, thanks to the rain of notifications we receive on the screen and possible prizes. It seems easy to win… but it is easier to lose, especially as shown by the addiction that grows among young people (boys).

Concerned about the increase in sports betting, an anti-grass roots attitude has emerged. In Azpeitia, for example, the neighbours and neighbours of Azpeitia, called by the Elkar group, concentrated last July (in the photo) in front of the betting house they will open to denounce, among other things, that these companies are making “a lot of money” in the workers’ neighborhoods, because people are betting on meeting their economic needs. In Vitoria-Gasteiz, the Youth Assemblies of Judimendi, in the neighborhood, out of play. The president of Athletic has published a report with the details of the gambling halls. Control measures in the rooms (chambers), more time than bars, increased drug use and disturbances in the vicinity of the halls and the growing police presence (“social control”) that this implies, that the neighbours and neighbours who have needed street educators are in the machines…

On the other hand, in Gamonal (Castilla y León), a group of citizens has asked the City Hall not to license companies in the play sector to remove their advertising of events and sports spaces, and to promote, among other things, betting and games to prevent the use of the media. In this respect, the Italian Government will ban betting houses from January 2019, as well as the sponsorship of football clubs to those companies. There is something to be discussed.