Andy’s Sting In The Tale (05/06/26) "A Morals Question for Every Football Fan"
- Andy Smith
- Jun 5
- 9 min read
Consider:
You are the commercial decision maker of either your football club or a football association.
If you could get immediate and easy money for your club or leagues from a potentially toxic consumer product like gambling, and I mean much more than the market rate, what would you do?
Of course, you are mindful that Gambling is a product you know to be potentially damaging.
But it’s not your job to make the rules.
And anyway, any damage will be under-reported and never darken your door.
And those unfortunates who your complicity helps damage will be a long term statistic and not your tenure.
And it certainly won’t affect your personal targets and annual bonus.
You also know that when any proverbial hits the fan, it will be by then, someone else like the NHS’s problem or just the stricken families.
Downstream cost issues from your decision will never be your problem.
So the moral question of the day.
Do you do the easy thing and cash grab from all those potential sponsors who are queueing up with real pound notes?
Industry insights tell us that Gamblingco algorithms constantly tell them that football is the perfect habit-changing marketing partner and recruitment and retention opportunity. It doesn’t just deliver long term ‘acceptance’, but overt product-sequence ‘normalisation’ and to put a cherry on top also provides the industry with immediate themed ‘calls to action’.
Us mug punters don’t have a chance.
And the government’s outrageous and growing complicity coins-in the betting tax and corporate taxes too apart from when the gambling cos are off-shored in Gibraltar or wherever.
And in ‘football think’, the future can and will always take care of itself.
That means regulation of ‘dangerous stuff like gambling’ should be for the governments or remote entities like Fifa, Uefa or whoever?
Just like they have done with smoking, and booze.
Anyway everyone else in football is embracing the money from Gambling links so why take a stance that means less money now into your club or game?
This is actually a deeply moral and ongoing question that football in Scotland has answered in two different ways.
Our men’s game pragmatically welcomes all things gambling because it delivers a significant premium over other sponsorship revenues available just now.
That doesn’t make them bad people, but just tells you that they have chosen to do the wrong thing and justifying it all by a combination of three factors.
1. Gambling currently pays a significant premium and out delivers everything else.
2. The downsides are way into the future and by then the monies will be long gone.
3. Everybody else is doing it and it’s not our job.
Meanwhile our relatively impecunious women’s game has said a simple and clear no to links with gambling.
So why in a week before the World Cup is Andy raising Gambling in his Sting and not wittering on about pub gossip and our national team or World Cup Songs?
Guys, this World Cup will come and go soon enough because they all do and have in the past.
I’ve seen too many.
And the overwhelming and almost comical over-hype that keeps people in the media over-busy will soon be forgotten and across the land stories and legends will replace any realities.
BUT
Those already addicted to gambling will still be cursed and suffering, and a whole new generation of users will be at the early stages of the cynical stepped recruitment process that football offers this pariah of an industry.
So a special word of thanks for David.
A long time Pars fan, founder member of the SFU and occasional contributor to some of my wee stories in ‘Sting’.
David sent me an amazing new book called, ‘Imitation Games’ by Darragh McGee.
Scariest Book I Have Ever Read.
It should have been on the main news and a topic of active progressive debate.
That would do our world more good that talking wall to wall about how a wee man with obvious deep mental health needs or issues, and inherent criminal intents, has over the years surreptitiously collected pepper pots, a campervan, jaguar car, and a whole Generation Game series of unlinked prizes.
And all with someone else’s money.
Darragh’s book is a logical step by step analysis of long term abusiveness by a ‘partner’.
It made me angry.
Starting Point is the lure to us all:
A cheeky flutter.
All part of the game.
Get closer to the action.
Friendly familiar voices inviting you to join the ‘real fans’ and get involved.
What harm can it do?
It’s all part of the fun.
The Reality:
It has never been easier to stake a bet.
Wall to wall domination of every sporting event: the mobile slot machine in your pocket is all you need to enter an immersive world.
Frictionless, faceless, available 24/7 and a £10 Billion UK industry.
Algorithm driven shooting fish in a barrel.
Gambling under our very noses as we watch live sport has not just grabbed the adults it purports to target.
It has conditioned the next generation too.
A genius but cynical cradle-to-grave recruitment that makes county lines look amateur.
Don’t believe their PR crap.
This is just an industry who wants money from losers.
As I said earlier.
After a while, World Cups come and go, but gambling addictions are very real and here’s a shocking insight for all clubs and leagues and cups in Scotland.
There are up to 650 gambling-induced suicides annually in the UK.
(Some think the figure is under-reported).
That means 50 plus in Scotland.
We will all know someone, we just didn’t know it was gambling.
One ultimate self-abuse a week north of the wall.
Just typing that I’m sitting back and shocked at what I’ve written.
Here’s three pleases.
Wake up Politicians
Wake up UEFA/FIFA
Wake up Scottish Football
This Week’s Sting
1. Papering Over Cracks
2. Ireland Making a Stand?
3. Outrageous Visa Issues Because of King Donald
4. Why Righteous Change at Fifa Won’t Happen
1 One Week Countdown
A week away from an opening in Mexico.
Chaos hasn’t erupted yet but signs are building.
Fifa are said to be panicking about unsold tickets and are now selling/dumping blocks of seats on unregulated, (illegal) non-Fifa sites at prices below the cost to avoid the embarrassment of undercutting the good faith that drove fans to buy earlier offers.
This week King Donald decreed, “Weve broken every record’.
When you increase the number of games from 64-104, play in large capacity NFL Stadia across 3 countries technically you should have the biggest World Cup ever.
I’d say we will also see more empty stands than ever before as USA punters don’t really care enough and my son who lives in Monterrey tells me the tickets south of the border are so expensive that locals are priced out.
And spare a thought for the Iran team who if they do actually fulfil their fixtures will have a 2700 mile commute.
I am happy to say that there will be an aftermath because too many things have crawled out of Fifa’s long grass.
So much about this organisation that is just plain wrong.
Constant cynical milking to keep Infantino in the power and leverage to which he has become accustomed.
NGO FairSquare to Bring “Biggest Ever Complaint” against Fifa and Gianni.
The powerful NGO have launched “Reboot Fifa”.
This is what they said.
“Infantino isn’t fit to to lead Fifa.
And Fifa isn’t fit to govern football”
It will take politicians, governments, football associations, and sponsors to listen to arguments they can’t ignore.
They will fail because the man has it all stitched up but I wish them well.
2 When the Right Thing is the Hardest to do.
Tonight in Honved, Hungary, Scotland Women’s team play Israel in Scotland’s home fixture.
In a parallel world Eoin Doyle at RTE said this week talking about Ireland’s upcoming Nations League fixtures with Israel.
“Ireland should not play Israel in upcoming fixtures. When a country is allowed to turn up, shake hands, and hear its anthem played the message sent to its population is ‘Life goes on a normal’.
It doesn’t and shouldn’t”.
This week King Donald in an expletive filled tirade said to his pal, Bibi Netanyahu on a call that is on YouTube.
(It was leaked then verified).
“You’re fu**ing crazy, you’d be in jail if it wasn’t for me, and every body hates you, everybody hates Israel’.
Israel have excelled in a coordinated conflation against growing world concern by saying justifiable anti Zionism is actually Anti-Semitism.
But in full view we all have seen the ongoing situations and in football Fifa have been complicit too.
I don’t know why the European countries have never acted together and black-balled Israel and am glad Ireland have the approaching problem and not us.
Irish Football people want to cancel the fixtures but the Irish FAI are broke and need the revenues.
So I wish our Women well tonight and no bad will to the Israeli players but I’d be a personal conscientious objector on this one.
3 Esta Una Verguenza
I have full sympathy for all Scots and other fans, all innocents, who have been told this week that their ESTAs for short term USA visits have gone from ‘Authorization Approved’, to “Authorization not approved”.
No rhyme or reason, and with all the USA cuts nobody to say why.
More grist to the mill of World Cup unhappiness.
4 Machiavelli, the Master, at Work
President Jahnnie, replaced an old crook called Sepp Blatter but prior to that had had several years to structure his future.
The man is a political genius who simply worked out first how to become the grandest fromage in football.
Then how to stay there.
Fifa have 211 full members split into 6 ‘world regions’.
Europe has 55, Africa 56, North and Central America 41, Asia 47, Oceania 13 and South America 10.
Most were by definition impecunious and need international games to fund the existence of national FA’s and being the big football cheese in your own country is a nice place to be.
Here’s a few hard facts that explain what is now a feature in Infantino’s World Football.
- Only 8 countries have and indeed very few newbies outside that group can ever win the World Cup.
- 71% of Fifa members currently rely on Fifa’s, (Infantino’s), development fund generosity to exist.
- Even with 48 countries at this year’s tournament that is only 17% of membership, and only 17% of votes too.
- Corruption is found in football in high places because it’s nice and rewarding to be a big cheese in a wee larder.
- Gianni knows the countries who will never compete in World Cups have the majority votes. They have to be looked after and that means money which is a world language.
A Spotlight on the Future
Fifa needs to milk it’s assets, to buy the very votes that keep the regime in place.
This will get progressively worse because Fifa will never have enough money.
World FA’s, Norway excluded, are nearly all complicit in the new Infantino inspired game. (If Scotland were not at the USA we’d be laughing at the English for paying such stupid ticket prices).
It’s capitalism run wild and won’t stop till consumers wake up and fight back.
That won’t ever happen.
Sting is
A personal take on what’s happening around football.
I have no problem if you disagree but hope you’ve had to think why I’m wrong.
My wee column doesn’t much care about stuff like Martin now becoming a permanent fixture in the East End or who my team’s first game next season will be against.
I’m sad ICT now have a gambling link too but understand their need for incomes.
Basically I want football to flourish and remember that’ it’s not just about winning things.
This job highlights the uneasy relationship it has with money.
A toxic bedfellow indeed.
Good luck to all my pals heading over the pond, May your Estas be confirmed.
Andy’s Album of the Week
Macca: The Boys of Dungeon Lane
Big thanks to Al, another Clachnacuddin fan from Inverness and a founder member of the SFU for sending me Macca’s new album for this week’s album slot.
His 21st solo album was recorded over the last 4 years with studio genius Andrew Watt who I hadn’t heard of.
Macca has become a national treasure and his early catalogue has been significantly upgraded by critics who called it so wrong in the first place.
I always liked the man’s output.
His music was influenced by where he came from and was always tuneful even if you had to dig a little to understand what exactly he was saying.
His love of corollaries was deep and powerful, and for me that was just another layer of his understated genius.
This new album is retrospective in many ways and carries more direct insights and memories that we’re told he has never shared before.
It works because it balances between sounding fresh and like being with an old pal at the same time.
Of course his voice has less range.
And his first ever, ever duet with Ringo on ‘Days We Left Behind’, made one review I read mention some Phillip Larkin words I’d never come across.
Phillip Larkin had asked and replied.
“What are days for?
Days are where we live.
“Days are to be happy in”.
Here’s some of the words from Macca’s days he has left behind.
Looking back at white and black, reminders of my past
Smoky bars and cheap guitars, but nothing built to last
Nothing ever stays
Nothing comes to mind
No one can erase
In the skies, the skylarks rise above the sounds of war
Since that day, I knew they'd stay with me forevermore
'Cause nothing stays the same
And no one needs to cry
And no one is to blame
For the days we left behind
The days we left behind
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