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{
    "id": 677278,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/677278/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 232,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Ababu",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 108,
        "legal_name": "Ababu Tawfiq Pius Namwamba",
        "slug": "ababu-namwamba"
    },
    "content": "Thank you, Hon. Speaker. In February 2013, as the then Minister for Sports, I stood and urged this House to pass the Sports Act. Among the key elements of that Act, which I remember stressing passionately before this House, was the framework to allow sports betting. It is under that framework of sports betting that we now have mushrooming companies and businesses undertaking that increasingly lucrative business of sports betting. When we were drafting the Sports Bill and debated it in this House, the motivation behind sports betting was to help generate revenue that we believed could be reinvested in sports through sponsorship deals that we have witnessed by firms like Sportpesa. We never envisaged at that time as we proposed that legislative framework that we would be facing a crisis that we are witnessing today. As we talk about the spectre and the challenge of addiction to betting that is now afflicting school children, and I speak with a lot of awareness that students in the galleries are following these proceedings, I believe we are also sending caution to them that we do not want them to be addicted to gambling. It is a bad idea. It is destructive because they are wasting their school fees, pocket money, resources and time. Hon. Speaker, let us not condemn sports betting because as an idea, it was motivated by very good intentions. We should, however, look for a way to deal with the mischief and negative elements that have accompanied an initially very good idea. I was shocked to see Sportpesa, a firm that has risen to be the premier sports betting firm in this country, shelling out Kshs6 billion in a sponsorship deal with Hull City, an English Premier League club. Swiftly, in the footsteps of that historic deal, they have also announced another deal with Southampton, another premier league club. The figure that Sportpesa is shelling out in those sponsorship deals is not loose The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}