Sam Badcock was 23 when he lost £100 – a birthday gift from his brother – on a gambling machine.
“I sprinted back to my room, grabbed the rest of the money and sprinted back to that machine as fast as I could,” he says.
Back then, Sam was playing £100-a-spin fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs), which offered digital roulette.
Described as the “crack cocaine of gambling”, uproar about their addictive nature led to FOBTs being effectively banned in 2019. Sam migrated to the immersive graphics and catchy sound effects of £2-a-spin slot machines.
Arcades featuring these machines have flourished on Britain’s high streets, replacing their higher-stake FOBT cousins. There are now almost 30,000 such slot machines in Britain,…