Imitation Games

byDarragh McGee

How Gambling Hijacked Sport

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Brought to you by Penguin.

A pioneering, eye-opening investigation into the world of online gambling, its explosive growth and the transformational impact it is having on sport, tech, individuals and society.

A little flutter. All part of the game. Get closer to the action. A familiar voice, inviting you to join the real fans and get involved.

It has never been easier to place a bet. Wall to wall adverts on repeat surround every sporting event. The smartphone in your pocket all you need to unlock a dizzying array of bets on almost any aspect of any sport.

Since its origins as a provincial cottage industry almost twenty-five years ago, UK online gambling has become a globe-straddling behemoth worth more than £10 billion a year. It can sometimes feel as if the point of sport is to bet on it.

But it didn’t have to be this way. In Imitation Games, academic and BBC New Generation Thinker Darragh McGee travels the world to tell the incredible story of the individuals and companies who brought this brave new world of betting into being (and got very rich doing so).

And he traces the devastation and destruction that gambling leaves behind it. The inadequate safeguards and the broken lives that mark the fun stopping. And proffers a series of solutions for how we can create a different future.

© Darragh McGee 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

As the number of gambling related suicides, bankruptcies and family break-ups mount we at last have a book that explains how we let this happen, what the real costs of the industry are, and what sport might do about it

David Goldblatt, author of The Age of Football and The Game of our Lives

About Darragh McGee

Darragh McGee is an academic based at the University of Bath and an authority on the changing relationship between gambling and sport. He has led a decade of cutting-edge research on the growth of online sports gambling in the UK and Sub-Saharan Africa, including the public health impacts on a new generation of young people. His research and writing appear in global media outlets, including the Guardian, the BBC, and Men’s Health. He holds a doctorate from the University of Toronto, Canada. He was named a BBC New Generation Thinker in 2020. Imitation Games is his first book.
Details
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • ISBN: 9781529925326
  • Price: £14.00
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