As England prepare to face Norway in the World Cup quarter-final, James Gordon Reid reflects on the joy, spectacle and national devotion football inspires. But with betting companies embedded in the game, he asks whether Christians can celebrate sport while resisting the darkness of gambling
The England–Norway World Cup match will thrill the nation, but it also exposes the deeper story beneath the spectacle. Football has become one of the great liturgies of modern life. It forms our desires, directs our loyalties, and reveals the values that govern our public imagination. For Christians, this is a moment to ask what Kingdom values look like when the world is watching.
Sport and betting have historically been uncomfortable bedfellows. According to FIFA, the 2026 World Cup is financially supported by the international gambling platform Betano. This continues its sponsorship of the 2022 and 2025 tournaments, the 2024 UEFA Euro, the 2024 Copa América, and clubs such as Aston Villa. This pattern is not incidental. It reveals a commercial imagination in which profit becomes the organising principle of global sport.
When money becomes master
The Bible offers a counterbalance to this materialistic narrative of personal and institutional greed. St Paul’s warning to Timothy is striking: “Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap” (1 Timothy 6:9). The love of money distorts the heart long before it destroys the life. Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 6:24 is equally uncompromising: “No one can serve two masters.” We cannot serve both God and money. This tension is a lived reality Christians must explore and decide upon.
My own experience as a mission assistant for The Church of England has shown me how gambling becomes a gateway to licentiousness and the destruction of personal lives and relationships. This is not always in the lurid sense. It is often found in the slow erosion of self‑control, trust, and relational stability so needed for society to flourish. St Paul’s prophetic witness echoes this in his instruction to the Philippians: “Let each of you look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4). Profit built on addiction is a violation of neighbourly love.
Calvin understood this dynamic with remarkable clarity. His prohibition of gambling in Geneva, often caricatured as puritanical severity, was in fact a form of civic compassion. It was a recognition that communities flourish when the vulnerable are shielded from predatory forces. If Calvin’s prophetic witness had been upheld, it is unlikely I would be taking calls from suicidal men in my role as a Samaritan counsellor. These are men driven to the margins by avaricious, unregulated gambling companies.
Gambling rarely travels alone. It often arrives in the company of alcohol misuse, strained relationships, and behaviours that damage communities.
A gift in danger of corruption
In both parish ministry and Samaritan work, I have seen how gambling rarely travels alone. It often arrives in the company of alcohol misuse, strained relationships, and the quiet slide into behaviours that damage communities. I have listened to men who describe weekends lost to liquor, wages swallowed by betting apps, and the shame that follows when desperation leads to crime. These stories are not sensational. They are ordinary, and that is what makes them so troubling.
When the rhythms of national celebration normalise excess, it becomes harder for vulnerable people to find a path back to stability, dignity, and hope. This harm is not confined to deprived communities. When I was a houseparent and lecturer at an International College in Cambridge, I saw how the predatory reach of apps could ensnare the seemingly privileged.
My lived experience in ministry counselling and lecturing is not unrepresentative. The British Government’s 2023 review into gambling‑related harms discovered that problem gambling is most common among the unemployed and those living in deprived areas. Exploitation of the vulnerable by big business is not a Kingdom value. The study also found a distinct link between gambling and criminal activities including fraud, selling drugs, and taking out loans in another person’s name. Jesus, St Paul, and John Calvin could see this coming. We did not need the government review.
Yet sport itself offers the possibility of collaboration, belonging, and shared hope. St Paul’s reminder that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, found in 1 Corinthians 6:19, invites us to enjoy football as a gift. It is something that strengthens us, not something poisoned by the dangers of gambling.
I offer this reflection as a gift. What kind of society are we becoming? Are we becoming a society that celebrates hangovers, keeps pubs open until 5am, and lets children skip school after a match? Or are we becoming a society in which joy, integrity, and care for the vulnerable shape our common imagination?
The prophetic question remains. In the noise of the World Cup, whose voice are we truly listening to? Mammon’s or Jesus’?
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