Lately, watching a game of Colombian soccer has become somewhat annoying, not due to the fact that your team does not get the three points after the final whistle, but because of the uninterrupted advertisements that encourages you to learn about new betting houses that give away some bonuses. exorbitant for the simple fact of registering on their web pages.

In addition, footballers that we all know and admire represent the visible face of a project that may create a future addiction to the gambling due to its invasive advertising.

A reality on this growing market is the alliance that Dimayor made with a betting brand, the latter becoming the maximum sponsor of Colombian professional football, since in the past they have been national beverage companies.

It becomes even more worrying to talk about the proliferation of online gambling in Colombia, when after doing a little research on the subject, we see how the profile of the Colombian gambler is distributed socioeconomically. According to data extracted from the official website of Coljuegos, more than a million people bet through these portals, of which seven hundred and ninety thousand people have already registered on a betting portal.

In the report on the profile of the Colombian player, people with incomes between less than six hundred thousand and one million three hundred thousand pesos correspond to 57% of the gamblers in Colombia. While those who earn from three million pesos onwards only constitute 2% of the sample.

The betting market penetrates vulnerable socio-economic groups. So much so that 55% of the people who bet are from strata one and two.

In Spain, for example, it has been regulated that houses dedicated to gambling are constantly being built in the “working class” neighbourhoods: in three years their physical presence has increased by 141%, even neighbourhood groups were created that appeal to take out this new “drug ”Of their neighbourhoods. It is worrying to see reports in Spain that one in five young people is addicted to gambling.

Although today we do not know exactly how harmful online sports betting in Colombia can be, we must take Spanish civil society as an example, so that the gambling advertising does not become a “national bet”.