No, gambling doesn’t create wealth

Let’s play a game. We bet, and both roll a dice. Whoever gets the highest, wins. If we tie, I win. Does that sound like a fair game? Maybe not, but this is how every casino is designed.

In the short run, you might get lucky, but in the long run the house always wins.

I cannot recall where I first read this, but it is a pretty apt description of gambling, an addiction that we are fast latching on to.

I am not one to judge how people spend their money, as long as they are fully aware of the downside, and take responsibility for it.

However, what I take exception to is the stance being peddled by those advocating for the recent sport gambling craze that has Kenyans in its claws.

Make no mistake; there is nothing altruistic about gambling. There is not a single echelon of society that it is going to uplift and anyone who deigns to convince us otherwise is lying.

The fact that regulators and the sports ministry seemingly sanction the activity is because of the revenue earning capability it has from direct and indirect taxes, it has nothing to do with the potential to make we commoners rich overnight.

If anything, gambling will make more paupers faster than you can say millionaire.

At the end of the day, it is a business like any other, only that it has the unfortunate drawback of catching you in its tentacles, with little chance of release.

As at the last count, this is what Kenya’s estimates showed. The country had, by the end of March 2016, 23 licensed gaming operators serving 2 million active gamblers, with about 300,000 users playing every week with each gamer betting Sh100 per set.

Gamers who are yet to make a killing recount playing for as long as 10 months, spending significant amounts of money and time in a bid to get the predictions right.
What else do we know?

At an amount as low as Sh100 and the efficiency of placing bets with or without access to the internet, the activity significantly lowers the barriers of entry ensnaring not only but also the poor and vulnerable in society.

Do you know who else does that? Promising people a quick shot at escaping their worldly woes in a country that has shown how little it cares about them?

Yes, they of the ‘let us prey’ fame who we have castigated, time and again for having nothing other than their own interests at heart.

They prey on gullibility and hopelessness. And while we are at it, let us deconstruct the myth around gambling in Kenya.

Gambling history smoulders with the sleazy glamour of saloons and Vegas’ slot machines, racecourse and racehorse betting that leaves the players high on adrenaline before they resume their normal lives, having sated the adrenaline rush.

And that is all it is meant to be; entertainment.

It is not an income-generating activity, it is not the bread and butter of our existence and it is certainly not a full-time career.

Unfortunately in Kenya, the dreams of those engaging in online sport betting are riddled with how many times they can multiply the rent money they just frittered away.

And the millionaires that they will become if they played just one more time, the jobs they will quit if they hit the jackpot, just as long as they play long enough.

After all, did we not have a jackpot winner who pocketed a handsome Sh29.6 million late last year?
But do not lie to yourself.

Just like hard drugs, the addiction is real, fuelled by an adrenaline rush around betting and there is no such thing as trying it out for size. But herein lays the cognitive bias.

Scientists say that where gambling is the topic of conversation, our brains can be ridiculously irrational.

The tendency to think that we are at less risk of experiencing a negative event compared to others and instead likely to have the same luck that befell the jackpot winner constitutes an optimism bias.

You know what, Kenyans, I get it. We are tired. Of leadership that does not have our or our family’s interests at heart.

Of working back-breakingly hard for our money only to have it stolen by those in power, by those who we have entrusted with it for safe-keeping, for the dearth of even the most basic human rights.

But, these get-rich-overnight schemes from ponzis, pyramids and ‘kupanda mbegu’ to gambling are not the solution.

You have seen how catastrophic the first two turned out. Do not be a statistic.

If you choose to gamble, do it for the fun and a manageable downside, not because you think it is your ‘prince charming’ or some sort of deserved deliverance.

And for the purveyors of gambling, by all means do your marketing, you have full right to. Just have the decency not to lie to our faces and spread fallacies about how much better the society will be for it.