New research is shining an unfavorable light on the fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBT) in UK bookmakers’ betting shops.

On Wednesday, the betting industry-funded Responsible Gambling Trust (RGT) released a series of reports on FOBT use – viewable in full here, here and here – which showed that problem gamblers, ethnic minorities and the unemployed were more likely to play for the machines’ infamous maximum £100 stake.

The research, which was conducted by NatCen Social Research, Geofutures and Featurespace, relied on a dataset of 4k FOBT users, drawn from a sample of gamblers who held bookmaker loyalty cards.

The researchers acknowledge that this sample is not representative of all FOBT players, but of “highly engaged players only” and thus the findings need to be taken with a grain of salt.