This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Bookmakers are preparing to shut shops and push customers towards online gambling, as they brace for curbs on fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs) that take effect on Monday.

The industry has repeatedly warned that reducing FOBT stakes from £100 to £2 – a move hailed by the culture secretary, Jeremy Wright, on Friday as a “significant step forward in protecting vulnerable people” – would trigger store closures and job losses.

Documents seen by the Guardian indicate Ladbrokes has already chosen 71 out of 1,000 shops that are likely to pull down their shutters, affecting sites from Ayrshire to Essex, at an estimated cost to the company of £50,000 per shop.

But there are also early indications that the industry may have overstated the potential for a bonfire of bookies. While a controversial report commissioned by the Association of British Bookmakers predicted that up to 4,500 shops could shut – more than half of all the shops in the UK – estimates from the big bookmakers so far indicate a toll closer to 2,300.

In Birmingham city centre, the early picture emerging among customers and staff from the FOBT cut is mixed. The £2 stake has been in effect here since early March, part of a trial designed to help firms understand the impact and manage the transition.

“It’s shit, innit,” said one roulette player in a branch of Ladbrokes. “You’ve got to play for longer.”

But he agreed that the lower stake, by definition, limits the amount he can lose. “To be honest I think all these places should be closed down. I don’t have a problem but I know other people who do.”

Staff said the impact of the £2 stake on trade had been noticeable but not devastating. “When we first got them people were a bit funny about it but they’re coming round,” said one employee of Coral, owned – like Ladbrokes – by Isle of Man-based GVC. The shop, he added, has not suffered.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Betfred shop in Birmingham. Players of the FOBTs have given mixed responses to the £2 limit. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

Behind the counter at nearby Betfred, a staff member spoke of “mixed reviews”, while a William Hill employee took a similarly sanguine approach.

“We’ve lost a bit of business but it’s not been too bad,” he said. “You’d be surprised how some people kick off. They’re saying ‘I lost all my money last week and now you’re stopping me winning it back’. That doesn’t make sense to me. If you lost your money, you lost your money.”

What is clear is that the bookmakers are responding to the regulatory shift in very different ways.

During the bitter and ultimately highly political lobbying campaign over FOBTs, Paddy Power was a lone dissenting voice within the industry. It does not expect any of its 320 shops to close, partly because it eschewed the FOBT-heavy strategy adopted by rivals.

While it focused on traditional sports betting, peers opened stores in local “clusters”, circumventing regulations limiting the number of FOBTs per shop to four. The result has been a UK-wide layer of shops that are unsustainable without that income.

In one of Paddy Power’s Birmingham branches, a sign informs punters of the “new and exciting” £2 roulette game. But a prominently displayed sign at William Hill, by contrast, reminds customers that the government is to blame for spoiling the fun.

Killing machines: Tracey Crouch on why she resigned as minister over FOBTs Read more

It is no surprise that William Hill, and others, are resentful. FOBT roulette was a licence to print money like no other, providing £1.7bn of high street bookmakers’ £3.2bn annual revenue. One way to bridge the gap is to seek rent reductions from landlords, echoing the desperate measures increasingly being taken by other retailers wrestling with online competition.

Another option is to divert players towards alternative gambling games.

Staff at William Hill demonstrate one game that offers FOBT fans a pale echo of high-stakes roulette, within the new rules of course.

Players can only put up £2 of their own money, but can place a further £28 of virtual chips on the digital roulette table. If their luck is in, the machine will stake all £30 of those chips, real and virtual, with a maximum prize of £500.

The same game is on offer at nearby Betfred, but the odds are not favourable and it takes all of two minutes to lose £20.

As the Guardian revealed last month, Ladbrokes is deciding which staff to make redundant based, in part, on their performance in directing customers to alternative products, particularly slot machines and online.

But bookies should beware. The Gambling Commission warns that, with FOBTs out of the way, it is “looking closely at player protection on other high street machines”.

It is also turning its attention to online gambling, which is increasingly attracting the same kind of unwanted political and regulatory attention that led to FOBTs being curtailed. These days, the house does not always win.