It is, of course, this April that the maximum stake levels on FOBT’s is being cut down to just £2. However, in something of an anomaly, betting shops based in Northern Ireland are not required to adhere to that new legislation.
There has been something of an outcry by consumer groups and gambling problem charities based in Northern Ireland and they have been pushing bookies based there to voluntarily adhere to those new minimum stake requirements.
Well, it would appear that the pressure being applied on those betting shop operators have been successful, for it has just been announced that betting shops in Ireland will adhere to the new FOBT stake levels being imposed on betting shop operators in the rest of the UK.
There will, by way of this action, be a lot of jobs lost in the betting industry once those new stake levels come into effect, with all of the major betting companies that operate betting shops in the UK saying they are going to have to close down a huge number of their betting shops and lay off staff.
Bonuses and all manner of incentives also appear to currently be on offer to betting shop staff who manage to get their customers to sign up to the online betting and gambling sites operated by the firms they work for, however that is probably going to be a fairly fruitless task.
If punters do want to gamble online there is a high chance that they have already signed up to various betting sites. The true scale of the job losses will be seen in the months following the implementation of those new FOBT stake levels.
