From Playboy pin-up to prohibitionist: the man taking on British gambling
Derek Webb, once profiled in Playboy as a casino game inventor, now funds campaigns to restrict the gambling industry he helped build.Summary
The article examines Derek Webb, an Englishman who made millions inventing casino games like three card poker and was profiled in a 2004 Playboy article. Now in his seventies, Webb has become a leading figure in the campaign to restrict gambling in Britain. He founded the Campaign for Fairer Gambling in 2012, successfully lobbied to reduce fixed odds betting terminal stakes from £100 to £2, and donated £1.3 million to the Labour Party between 2023-24. He also funds the Social Market Foundation and advocacy groups including Clean Up Gambling and the Coalition to End Gambling Ads. The article argues that anti-gambling policies based on questionable data — including a flawed Gambling Survey for Great Britain — have led to punitive taxation, widespread shop closures (UK bookmakers dropped from over 9,000 in 2014 to fewer than 6,000), and job losses, with Entain announcing 400 cuts and Betfred and Paddy Power closing 232 shops. The article further argues that horse racing, which depends on bookmaker levies and media rights payments, is being harmed as collateral damage, and criticizes figures like Gordon Brown for advocating higher machine games duty despite the industry's decline. The piece concludes that for the anti-gambling lobby funded by Webb, ideology trumps reason.
(Source：The Spectator)