Plus ça change … VLTs and online sports gambling

The province of Ontario was the first jurisdiction in Canada to offer a private online gambling (sorry, gaming) market in April 2022. Alberta has now followed suit and officially launched its own regulated, online sports betting market. Will Manitoba be next?

There is certainly money to be made. Ontario added roughly $469 million in online gambling profits to its governmental coffers for the 2023-24 period. And you can bet Alberta has its eyes firmly fixed on the potential for proportionate dollar amounts flowing into its provincial treasury.

What strikes me are the obvious similarities between video lottery terminals (VLTs) and online sports betting. The same governments (and not the Mafia) trying to separate people from their money, and the attendant damaging outcomes — but with different technology. Even the political calculations and implications are a carbon copy of the politics of VLTs.

I vividly recall a government official from the then-Nova Scotia Alcohol and Gaming Authority telling me that VLTs — the crack cocaine of gambling ­­— were operating on old technology that would eventually be overtaken. Little did I know that the new technology would enable people to gamble on ubiquitous online platforms.

Since writing my book on VLTs, Terminal Damage: The Politics of VLTs in Atlantic Canada, I’ve been asked periodically about my thoughts on pervasive online sports betting. I’m no expert, for sure. But I do see a lot of parallels — along with some key differences — between VLTs and online gambling.

In fact, I would argue that online sports betting platforms are merely the modern-day version of the early 1990s VLTs. Not only are they just as addictive, arguably more so, they are just as deadly, as well.

Let’s be honest here: VLTs kill people. These mesmerizing “killing machines” grab hold of people, drain them dry and then take their souls — along with their reasons for living. The numbers of VLT-related suicides are probably conservative, since family members are often reluctant to talk about tragic personal/family matters.

But what we do know is that those who end up taking their own lives do so out of profound desperation and because they can’t physically and mentally stop themselves from gambling.

The fallout from VLT addiction also includes family breakups, individual and family bankruptcies and even loss of homes. It is often said: every gambling addict has an outsized and generally negative impact on 10 other people who are close to them.

Add to that the whole criminal element of theft from employers, fraud charges and the “cleaning” of illicit drug money through banks of VLTs and casinos. There are other serious issues with VLT addiction and domestic violence, related health-care expenditures and job-related costs.

Those engaged in compulsive online sports betting — or those close to them — will recognize many of these gambling scourges. Of course, there are important differences in the two forms of gambling, and it remains to be seen what the long-term effects of online betting will be.

Right now, the online betting format provides increased convenience through 24-7 websites and smartphone apps (and digital payment methods), sketchy mechanisms for oversight, “self-exclusion” and verification, and unrelenting gambling advertising and promotions. You can also point to the frequency of dopamine-driving wins and near-wins online, the lure of parlay and micro betting, and the fast-paced, in-play betting options.

After the legalization of private online gaming, the Canadian Medical Association Journal noted that the rate of young gamblers who contacted Ontario’s mental health helpline for gambling problems has increased by more than 300 per cent since 2022. More to the point, there has been some reporting that the chief coroner of Ontario has seen a sharp rise in gambling-related suicides after the sports betting online system was first implemented.

While the risk for provincial governments from gambling suicides and addiction will vary at different points in time, it is not the kind of risk that would threaten to topple a sitting government in the next election.

Nor does online sports betting, like VLTs, seem to be an issue that opposition provincial parties wish to utilize or exploit as a wedge issue for electoral purposes. The fact of the matter is that VLTs and online gambling are not a top-of-mind issue for the vast majority of the voting public — which is precisely what provincial governments are banking on.

When all is said and done, online sports betting is no different than VLT gambling. And here’s the dirty little secret that both VLTs and sports betting online share — namely, that the best customers for governments, and the ones that they rely on most, are addictive problem gamblers that they actually create.

Unfortunately, provincial politicians are just as addicted to the revenues, pretend to care about problem gambling and the deadly social fallout, and convince themselves that destroying lives still serves a public purpose.

But as I’ve said to them many times: how would you explain your obsession with revenue-generation to the parents who just lost a loved one via suicide because of a gambling addiction?

It’s hard to forget the blank stare and the infuriating silence.

Peter McKenna is professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.