Former Paddy Power Boss Stewart Kenny Reflects On Turn To Gambling Harm Campaign
Stewart Kenny, the co-founder and former chief executive of Paddy Power, who helped build Ireland's biggest bookmaker into an international betting group, has spent the years since leaving the company's board warning about the harm the industry he helped create can cause.
A new profile in the Irish Independent on October 16 revisits that journey, from Ireland's most recognisable bookmaker to a vocal campaigner against problem gambling.
From Bookmaker To Critic
Kenny co-founded Paddy Power in 1988 and ran the company until 2002, later serving as chairman before resigning from the board of its parent, Flutter Entertainment, in 2016.
He has said publicly that he left the board because he felt the company was not doing enough to protect vulnerable customers from the addictive pull of its own products, particularly online slots and in-play betting.
In a BBC Radio 4 documentary series, Kenny argued that the speed of online slot games is central to their addiction, describing the short gap between a stake and a result as allowing players to "repeat the dose" in rapid succession.
He has said that the combination of bright visuals, near-misses, and constant availability on smartphones has made online casinos far more dangerous than the betting he built his career on.
Concerns About The Next Generation
Kenny, who still bets on horse and greyhound racing but has become increasingly critical of online slots, has said he would be comfortable with his own children holding betting accounts but would be troubled to see his grandchildren open one, pointing to how quickly new account holders are steered toward casino-style products through free-spin offers.
He has previously used stark language to describe fixed-odds machines and their online equivalents, at one point branding them the "crack cocaine" of gambling in a 2009 submission to the Irish government.
His comments come as Ireland's gambling sector adjusts to its first dedicated regulator, the Gambling Regulation Authority of Ireland, which began issuing licences for remote betting sites this year, and as the debate over how aggressively to restrict gambling advertising and machine-based products continues in both Dublin and London.
A Recurring Voice In The Debate
Kenny has periodically resurfaced in Irish public life since leaving Paddy Power's board, including in a 2021 interview in which he described problem gambling as a "major social problem" made worse by smartphone access, and has trained as a psychotherapist in the years since stepping back from the industry.
The Irish Independent's new profile situates that history alongside Kenny's own account of how his thinking changed, as pressure builds across Ireland and the UK for bookmakers to do more to limit gambling-related harm.
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