It’s a fashionable and belief that is long-held the UK’s high street betting shops victimize the bad. Bookmakers spring up in deprived areas, says received wisdom, in an effort to exploit those already suffering from economic difficulty.

Leading bookmaking organizations such as William Hill, Ladbrokes and Paddy Power have always strongly denied this, and a new report appears to keep them out, suggesting that the ‘poverty exploitation’ theory is a misconception.

The separate report, that was conducted by data analyst the Local Data Company at the behest regarding the Association of British Bookmakers (ABB), concludes great britain’s poorest areas already have a much lower concentration of gambling shops than more affluent areas. The study discovered that areas identified as having high quantities of deprivation host 17 percent of this country’s high street bookmakers, while 35 percent of shops are located those certain areas recognized as the wealthiest. Meanwhile, 62 percent of most UK betting shops are found in areas with lower-than-average poverty levels.

No Economic Incentive

The report also found that new shops, rather than appearing in bad areas, have really been concentrated into the areas that are least-deprived because, simply put, prosperous places are far more lucrative because customers have more income. There is certainly no incentive that is economic consequently, to target the vulnerable.

‘There is nothing into the data to suggest that bookmakers deliberately target poor and vulnerable people,’ stated Local Data business director Matthew Hopkinson. ‘Our analysis shows brand new shop openings are mainly in towns with low and normal deprivation scores not in the poorest areas.’

ABB chief executive Dirk Vennix said he hoped the findings would ‘dispel some damaging myths propagated by those wanting to demonize and toxify our industry.’

‘We are really a responsible and regulated industry selling a main-stream leisure product enjoyed by over 8 million individuals per year,’ said Vennix. ‘We choose where you should locate our shops in the same way as any other retailer would using commercial facets such as consumer need, footfall, and competitive presence. It makes no sense whatsoever for us to target poor communities or vulnerable people.’

Called ‘Blight’ By Some

Bookmakers have been under fire recently for identified expansion that is aggressive great britain and for the prevalence of fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs) in their shops. At the beginning of last year, federal government retail guru Mary Portas called for measures to be taken against the expansion of betting shops inside her review of high street retail stores, including that they certainly were ‘blighting our high streets’.

However, the report found that, to the contrary, betting stores were expanding at a slower rate than other businesses. 2013 saw an increase of 1.3 % in gambling shops, while the range pawnbrokers, coffee stores and convenience stores expanded at a rate of 3 per cent over that same period.

The publication of the report comes just ahead of a government study into FOBTs, due out this week, which seeks to examine policy in the machines. Parliament is trying to include to the rule of conduct drawn up by the ABB month that is last increasing player protection methods and developing spending and time limits for sessions. FOBTs allow clients to wager relatively large amounts sometimes as much as £100 (US$168) per spin on virtual casino games. Detractors argue they’ve promoted a resurgence in problem gambling since their introduction to Britain’s bookmaker stores in 2005.