Gambling Blues.

LaSexta has some useful news programs on it, including Salvados with Jordi Évole, and El Intermedio with the oddly named El Gran Wyoming – if you like a little comedy in your reportage, but this commercial TV channel is also plagued with ‘casino’ adverts (and, over the Christmas holidays, endless scent, perfume, cologne or rather ‘fragrance’ adverts. How much of this stuff can you splash on your body?). The casino gambling appears to be configured by computers, with an unexplained bias towards the companies involved. They even give the punter some tokens, free, to encourage them. No doubt Tele5 has similar adverts, but then, who watches Tele5?

And we thought that a flutter on the quiniela, the primitiva, the EuroMillions, the ONCE, the Cruz Roja and the Lotería Nacional would be enough to keep us all in pocket-change. All these and more legal gambles, including an evening down at the bingo, and yet the police will cheerfully raid a bar with a game of housey-housey going on. In fact, the police are even more interested in bars showing football on their TVs without a proper licence, and some 2,000 of them have recently been raided and threatened with fines and prison terms. Perhaps we had been betting on the result.

In one area in Madrid – a poor one, it goes without saying – out of every ten shops and stores, one is a betting shop.

Two out of every ten Spaniards play with sporting bets, to a lesser or greater degree, according to El Español, and without this type of business, the media (including our friends at LaSexta) would lose over 130 million euros a year in advertising.

A report here says that ‘...Spanish-licensed online operators generated revenue of €173.3m in the three months ending December 31, 2017...’. With so much opportunity available for the gaming companies (and dare we say it, money launderers), it’s no surprise that Gibraltar is a major player while both Ceuta and Melilla are eying the advantages of setting up in modest competition. Another report, here, says that the football club Real Sociedad is the only club in La Liga that doesn’t take sponsorship from gambling companies.

Gambling is indeed becoming a problem now, with various advice organisations set up to stop ludopatía (‘...It is a mental illness catalogued as an addictive disorder, in which the person who suffers from it feels enormous needs to play...’), says Nueva Tribuna here.

Between ‘casino’, lotteries, ‘sport betting’ and a quick game of dominoes, it’s a wonder we know how much will be in our wallets come morning.