Final Word from Wednesday, June 24, 2015
A report for the cabinet that was published a year ago stated that 25-40% of the adult Czech population had engaged in some form of gambling in the previous 12 months. That's roughly 1.8-2.9m bettors. Not included were foreigners, elderly citizens and underage children, but the report suggested that they didn't excessively distort the numbers. The total gambling market, including all official forms of betting, currently amounts to about Kč 138bn, with Kč 107bn returned to players. That means that each of these roughly 3m Czechs who engage in betting is wagering Kč 46,000 per year and losing Kč 35,700 of it. Yet the report for the cabinet stated that each gambler admitted to going through only Kč 6,000 on average per year. Why such a big discrepancy? Are gamblers such liars, or is there another explanation that no one wants to talk about? Instead of a nation of gamblers, do we perhaps have a nation of money launderers? [Czech Republic money laundering games of chance]
Glossary of difficult words
Correction: this is a revised version that corrects the amount returned to bettors;
to distort - to give a misleading or false account or impression of;
to wager - more formal term for "bet";
discrepancy - a lack of compatibility or similarity between two or more facts.