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Luckily during 23 years with the BBC, and in a 42 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, gambling on stories has never been an issue, because every fact is fully sourced, but this may not be the case for many people, and in football – fans are now placing complicated bets with England to be victorious, yet the result is unknown.
The only real winners of the vital World Cup (WC) semi-final match tonight against Argentina, could be the BOOKIES!
Journalism should NEVER involve gambling.
You should be absolutely secure in your facts, be confident your sources will stand and deliver in a court, and run almost everything past a specialist lawyer.
This is, perhaps, unknown, and it is thought that investigative journalists like me must take risks.
In fact risks are almost never taken.
Yes the language may be difficult for those who are targeted, but the facts should be certain, and preferably in the public domain already.
Regrettably this is not the case for a lot of other investigative journalists (whose work I respect), because they may take risks, and could, perhaps, take a leaf out of the gambling companies who are doing very nicely, thank you, out of the FIFA World CUP (WC), as they are winning when others are losing.
In this tournament (and a lot of eyes will be on tonight’s result), favourites have won 64 per cent of matches in normal time, compared with 53 per cent on average in the previous three.
Underdogs prevailed in only eight per cent, against an average of 23 per cent previously.
Such results would once have perturbed the bookies, which do well when favourites don’t, but not this time.
This is because they have steered many customers towards ‘bet builders’ (or ‘same-game parlays’ in the United States of America [USA]).
At Kambi (a sportsbook supplier), for example, these made up more than 30 per cent of bets at recent football tournaments.
Punters might bet on, say, England to win, Jude Bellingham to score, and the match to have over nine corners and more than two bookings, all in one wager.
However in the Norway game, only one of those outcomes occurred in regular time, so such bets help the bookies’ profits, and the figures suggest that despite match results generally favouring customers, all gambling companies remain broadly on course to achieve their usual margins.
So just remember when you put a fiver on England to win tonight, it might only be the bookies who come out victorious, and good investigative journalists might steer clear altogether, because they should know this!
Truths like these by Phil when he was being gripped by the rare neurological condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in the book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now!
