Deal or No Deal and similar shows may be forced off the air

Some of Britain’s most popular TV game shows could be forced off the air after regulators launched a probe into whether they constitute gambling.
Producers of Noel Edmonds’ hugely successful Deal Or No Deal on Channel 4 have been shocked to be told by the Gambling Commission that their £250,000 jackpot games could be breaking the law because they do not involve any element of skill.
ITV’s Red Or Black?, the £1 million a-night game show presented by Ant and Dec, and developed by Simon Cowell, is also understood to have been hit by the investigation.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2113217/Deal-No-Deal-faces-Gambling-Commission-probe-TV-gameshows-face-crackdown.html#ixzz1olBDL2za

Don't know what to make of this. I wouldn't have thought it would be considered gambling as you have to give something up before you play the game for it to be a gamble. Obviously the game includes gambles, but they're not really gambles if you don't really own that money till the company pay out.

I think this is telling:


It seems like it's something less than The Mail on Sunday are making out...

EDIT: It could be simply down to the show glorifying gambling too much. Maybe a "gambleaware.co.uk" logo or slight changes in the way the "gambling" is presented is all that's being mooted. Or they may have been reported by somebody and they've decided to have a look at it.

Spot on the nail. Gambling is not gambling unless there's a stake. The old adage "You came here with nothing" would seem to apply. There is no danger of money being lost on the part of the participant on DOND, as even a 1p win is 1p profit.

"Skill" is such a loose, subjective term anyway. What's the skill of a participant on the Crystal Maze compared to the skill of a player on Countdown? Can it be justified for one show to offer £1m for answering a few questions, and another to offer £1m for sitting in a house scratching their arse for 8 weeks?

I'd have thought there would have been more of a problem with the show potentially being product placement for thousands of gambling machines and online games across the country.

The Daily Mail are confusing decision making with gambling as regards to Deal - and as others say it's only really gambling if you place a stake. If Deal got axed they'd have to axe any game show with any element of jeopardy - which is practically any involving cash. The Chase and Millionaire would fall foul too, even though there is more skill involved - although I'd argue there is more luck involved in getting a multiple choice question correct than weighing up the probabilities of you being able to win more than an offer in Deal.

And let's remember these people consider answering the questions set by GMTV/Daybreak and This Morning for their phone in competitions to be "skill" too - although I wonder if the rules have been relaxed lately as I've noticed a couple of comps since the New Year which were just phoning to enter without answering a question.

It would also be rather ridiculous to see such shows axed yet the constant stream of ads for bingo websites remain. Then again how long had Deal or No Deal been running before someone decided retrospectively their phone in competition was unfair as the outcome was pre-recorded.

The only non "participation TV" gameshow I've known which pertains to constitute proper gambling is Stake Out.

It could be argued that the decision whether to accept the banker's offer in DOND at the relevant parts of the programme could be construed as skill, the contestant having to make a judgement as to the fairness or otherwise of the offer based on the remaining possible outcomes available at the time.

I wonder if the Million Pound Drop could be 'erm' shelved due to this, after all they do say at the start that the Million Pounds is the contestant's own money.

But it's clearly not.

Why would someone go on a show and choose to loose some money, with no reward?

And ITV's revival of Play your Cards Right would surely be scuppered as all card games are gambling.

Really by investigating these the Gambling Commission is becoming about as useful as the EU investigating the bendiness of bananas - a completely wasted exercise when firstly gambling isn't illegal and secondly there are much bigger concerns amongst the public than TV gameshows. It's not like people can become addicted to gambling on TV shows as in most cases it is a one-off appearance - unlike bingo sites and regular gambling.

What the gambling commission should really be concentrating on is spot betting which as cricket has shown is an easy target for corruption, and something that could actually be easily banned to an extent so people can't be throwing a no ball on the third ball of a fifth over or deciding to hold out knocking someone out in a fight as they've bet on themselves to do that in a later round.

Obvious Mail trolling aside, the avalanche of bet in-play NOW adverts battered at viewers during breaks in sport coverage would perhaps represent a better place to start.

No they don't. Phrases such as "Move your money back" doesn't mean it is the contestants own money any more than "Fingers on your buzzers" means that contestants bring their own buzzers along.

According to ukgameshows.com Challenge [TV]'s Stakeout was planning to use contestants own money but didn't in the end.

This all reminds me of the rumours circulating a few years ago stating that Avago was going to close because Sky didn't think they complied with the relevant gambling regulations and were threatening to remove them from the Sky platform. Whether Sky even had the authority to do that or were just trying to scare off the competition ahead of the launch of their very poor Sky Vegas Live channel still remains a mystery. Anyway, nothing came of those rumours and I predict the same will happen with this story too. Nothing.