The Britain Gambling Industry

In Britain - gambling is an industry, for growth.

With stable New Hampshire veering off into a state lottery venture, and Mayor Robert F. Wagner's proposal for legalized off-track betting going on New York City ballots in November, gambling ranks as a hot political-and-revenue-raising-issue in the U.S.

As the arguments pile up, governmental authorities turn for guidance to Britain, with its reputation (at least pre-Profumo) for staidness and balance.

Though many other countries have lotteries, the British through long experience have acquired a relatively cool and unemotional attitude toward gambling.

So both New York State and New York City (the state has final say on Wagner's proposal) have sent emissaries to study Britain's methods.

So successful have they been that they have branched out with investments in clothing manufacture and retail chain store.

With the start of the British soccer season, the betting fever is on again in earnest. Lured by the prospect of winning up to $420,000 with the 'investment' of a farthing - one-fourth of a British penny - millions of Britons stake an average 70cents a week on the big football (soccer) pools.

No one knows just how much is laid out in a year by gambling Britons, for the lord who lost $445,000 one evening at the chemin-de-fer tables for a London club to the lowly 'punter' (British for low-stakes bettor).

In the past years, punters laid out $200 million on the pools, another $100 million on their competitor, fixed-odds football betting.

Besides that, there are betting on the races, bingo, the gaming clubs. Estimates of the total run from $2 billion o $4 billion and on up.

A New York committee concluded that the British spend on gambling 65 percent of what they budget for defense.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald Maudling points out that most of his money is bet over and over. He figures the gambling public is probably not out of pocket more than $280 million a year.

This doesn't seem too startling to Britons, because its' nothing new. Good Queen Bess herself - Elizabeth, the First - sponsored a lottery. Some exclusive West end clubs have kept a 'betting look' for generations.

It has taken the affluent age, and the Betting and Gaming Act of 1960, though, to make gambling big business. On-track and on-credit race betting and football pools were already legal, but the act legalized off-track cash betting, chemin-de-fer, and - more or less by oversight - other forms of gaming such as bingo.