By Helen Birk
Typically, a football player will earn £60,000 a year.
In many cases, the salary will range from £25,000-$300,000.
Often, those who play football will have a lot of extra cash available to them and will be able to live a luxurious lifestyle.
Once the season is over, most of the players are left to pamper their own needs and commit to hobbies such as gambling.
Upon retiring around age 35, many players need to find ways to maintain their lucrative incomes and the rush they enjoy in the game. Eventually, this leads to gambling addictions and losses in the casino.
Several players have lost all or part of their fortunes to gambling addictions. Is there anyone who hasn’t lost money at the casino? A number of well-known footballers have lost money gambling, so take a look at how they managed to get into such situations:
Why Do Players Lose at the Casino?
There are pros and cons to every hobby, as well as there are pros and cons of playing at online casinos. The two most common problems faced by players are: not knowing how to stop in time, and choosing casinos which are unverified. It may take a psychologist to help you overcome excitement, but finding the best casino will be no trouble. The safest place to test your skills is a £2 deposit casino that offers a low casino deposit to their players, which increases players’ odds of winning and decreases risk since you will not spend large amounts of money. Playing with a top-rated operator will also ensure a safe and healthy gambling environment.
Michael Chopra
In an interview with The Guardian, this former Premier League striker confessed his gambling habit began when he was 17 years old. As a bonding ritual, he bet up to £30,000 per day while traveling with his Newcastle United teammates. Gambling eventually resulted in him losing millions. During Chopra’s playing days, he spent a lot of time in rehabilitation for gambling addiction, which led him to spending time at the Sporting Chance clinic founded by Tony Adams, who said the sport is battling a gambling epidemic.
Matthew Etherington
During the decade following his West Ham days, this winger admitted to losing close to £1.5 million on horse racing and poker. Betting up to £20,000 per day is common practice on the team bus, as Etherington mentioned. The England player struggled with a gambling addiction throughout his football career, losing a fortune on betting during that time. Former Stoke winger had to pay back £800,000 of debt, and this matter led to the breakdown of his marriage. Having failed to recover from a back injury in 2014, the 34-year-old retired from professional sports.
Kenny Sansom
Sansom achieved the second-highest number of caps as an English fullback. Unfortunately, due to alcohol and gambling addictions, the former Arsenal captain lost his entire fortune. He mentioned visiting the bookies almost every day in his 2008 autobiography To Cap It All…My Story. After becoming homeless due to his drinking and gambling problems, the 63-year-old man revealed that he had thought about suicide. His struggle with alcoholism has been well documented, as detailed in his 2008 memoir. During his latest interview with a Sunday newspaper, Sansom detailed how he would drink himself to sleep while gambling his PFA pension, often in parks around Bromley in south east London.
Keith Gillespie
Accordng to Gillespie, his entire fortune worth more than £10 million was lost to gambling and bad investments. Despite declaring bankruptcy at 35, this former Northern Ireland player ended his career 7-8 years after that. A year later, he joined Mindwell FC, the nation’s first football club dedicated to helping individuals with mental health conditions. When he was at the height of his gambling addiction, he lost £47,000 in a single afternoon. According to Gillespie, the FA should reconsider their relationship with the bookmaker. In his view, there can be no doubt that football and betting are unhealthy ties, as he wrote in the Daily Mail.
Eiður Guðjohnsen
This Icelandic footballer was rumored to have lost close to £400,000 in 2016. Following a severe knee injury, the man spent two summers recuperating in Las Vegas, where he became addicted to online gambling. He developed this addiction after sustaining an injury, leaving him alone in England while the rest of his family was at home in Iceland. The athlete went on to lose a series of money after winning £100,000 in a gambling session.
Paul Merson
In addition to his serious debts after retirement, Merson gambled and lost his home on top of it all. Paul Merson, former Arsenal football star, has revealed how he lost £7m as a consequence of his gambling problem. In an interview with the Daily Mail, he revealed how his first bet at 16 triggered a slippery slope that led him to lose “everything he ever had” – including two marriages. Supposedly, he kept gambling until all he had was loss – close to £7 million, including houses, cars, marriages, his entire pension and his reputation.
Helen Birk has written for the iGaming industry for over a decade, writing about everything from gambling strategies, market analysis to playing tips. Though her favorite subject area is online casinos and providing useful information for beginners and experts alike, she also writes about other topics that interest her. In her free time, she enjoys reading, jogging, and spending time with her family.
