Former England and Aston Villa forward Gabriel Agbonlahor has spoken about his struggles with gambling addiction, including coming home from training at 12:30, playing online poker, and visiting land-based casinos after work.
The issue of gambling in top-level sports, particularly football, has recently become a hot topic following the Italian football betting scandal. More than 40 players are involved in the betting probe, including Premier League footballers like Sandro Tonali and Nicolo Zaniolo, who plays for Agbonlahor’s former club Aston Villa.
Punishments are likely to include bans from playing professional football, with Tonali facing a three-year suspension from the sport. This comes after England and Brentford striker Ivan Toney was banned from football for eight months in May 2023 for 262 breaches of FA Rule E8.
FA Rule E8 prohibits players or staff associated with professional football from using information gained from their position in the sport to be used for betting. This includes placing sports bets themselves and sharing information with others.
In light of this, Gabriel “Gabby” Agbonlahor spoke to Alan Brazil on the talkSPORT morning show. While Tonali’s case focuses on his role in betting on sports, specifically games he featured in for AC Milan, Agbonlahor’s experience “was never betting on football, it was more the poker.”
There are no rules against professional footballers enjoying gambling outside of sports betting like poker and casino games, so nothing Agbonlahor did was illegal. It does show that gambling addiction can affect a wide range of people. As Agbonlahor explained, the causes of gambling addiction can also vary widely.
Research from the GamCare 2022/23 annual report shows that for 63% of UK gamblers, one of the primary reasons for gambling was chasing losses and wins. However, for Agbonlahor, “It wasn’t about winning money”. Instead, the forward, who scored 87 club goals, spoke of “coming home and being bored” after finishing training.
Agbonlahor fits into the category of the 33% reported GamCare cases that cited boredom as the primary reason for gambling. In addition, Agbolahor noted that he was “single, no kids, living with a couple of friends” as another reason why he was drawn to gambling.
Agbonlahor continued, “You’d get on your laptop, you’d play your poker online, then you might go to the casino in the evenings, and before you know it, you’re in Palm Beach Casino playing poker with the big dogs.”
In this most recent explanation of his past with gambling addiction, Agbonlahor only spoke about online poker, in the past he has mentioned betting on sports. In an interview with SunSport earlier in 2023, he once again mentioned that the cause of his gambling was “a boredom thing”.
In this previous interview, he also highlighted how playing online poker made him smash laptops in frustration on a daily basis. GamCare’s 2022/23 report noted that 80% of people that got in contact about problem gambling reported feeling stressed and anxious.
While Agbonlahor only shared his personal experiences and didn’t share any names, he mentioned that “it happened to a lot of players at the club”. Past tales from former professionals like Paul Merson who revealed his own struggles with gambling addiction in 2021 through his autobiography Hooked: Addiction and the Long Road to Recovery, illustrate that the problem is widespread.
Agbonlahor concluded his perspective by confirming that “it becomes an addiction”, but now, at 37, it is no longer an issue in his personal life.
