Cartoon TR: "Congratulations! Today a hopeful path full of opportunities is opening up before you".
Betting Avenue. Cartoon of 23/09/2018 in CTXT
It wasn't so long ago that the streets of cities and towns were full of bank branches, which are now closing down, then those video store cashiers appeared and became extinct while real estate agencies sprouted by the bucketload. Then came the invasion of frozen yoghurt shops, electronic cigarette shops and now betting shops are reproducing at the speed of the worst pandemic.
This map, found on the website of CODERE, one of the most popular betting companies, only shows the premises of one of the four or five with a high street presence. So the map would have many more points if the rest were added. There are many more.
Soon it will be possible to hop from gambler to gambler across Spain.
These companies are now spending more money than ever to give a cool image, to convey that gambling is cool. They have even used celebrities from sport and other trades to get more gamers hooked by trying. The strategy is to make them believe that they control the outcome of their bets. Because they are very smart gamblers they don't have that much to lose.
The result is that they have created a new generation of gamblers. People who are getting younger and younger and more and more addicted, who even get into debt with several quick loans. They thus enter headlong into the loop of chronic ruin.
Related: Sports betting: hooked on an unwinnable game
Tax candy
It was clear to the previous government that gambling was a profitable pathology, and it rewarded companies that pumped large amounts of money into the public coffers with a tax cut.
His draft General State Budget for 2018 contemplated a reduction in the rate applicable to net income from online gambling. Companies dedicated to online gambling and betting would no longer pay a tax on gambling activities. They went from paying 25% to 20% throughout the territory, except in Ceuta and Melilla. Where the rebate was even higher. There, the tax went down to 10% of net revenue.(Source)
Now, Podemos is negotiating with the Government to raise taxes on sports betting and online gambling and proposes a rise in the Tax on Gambling Activities, with exemptions for the Lottery, the betting pool and the ONCE coupon because these are small, established and traditional vices.Unidos Podemos also proposes that gambling advertising should be treated in the same way as alcohol and tobacco advertising and banned.
Be that as it may, advertising the Internet has always been a great source of information about casinos and gambling of all kinds, although they didn't always want to spend their money. Shortly after opening this blog I started to receive many offers to put camouflaged links to casinos and gambling in the articles, which I have always refused. They usually pay quite well, I have been offered up to 200 dollars for a simple link in an article. Even more for adding them to a stinky pseudo-spam article they sent chewed up.
The only proposal I accepted was this i was offered a very sweet deal and I couldn't pass it up. Mind you, it was completely free that time :P
