It was inaccurately presented in the media that Czechs lost 759 billion CZK. Czech players certainly did not spend over three-quarters of a trillion crowns (more than a third of the state budget) on gambling. In reality, they spent 53.8 billion crowns.
The sum of 759 billion CZK not only excludes winnings but is the total of all the money that players put into the game, with a significant portion of it being reinvested.
Imagine a player betting a hundred crowns, winning it back, and then betting it again. This scenario can repeat several times. However, each bet is counted separately in terms of statistics, so with each individual bet, the overall amount of "spent" money increases. If a player bets the same hundred crowns three times, from this perspective, they "spent" three hundred crowns, even though from their perspective, it's still the same initial hundred crowns they initially placed in the game. The vast majority of these circulating funds are won back by players. Last year, operators paid out over 705 billion CZK in winnings. So how much did Czech players actually lose? We find out when we subtract the total amount of bets from the total amount of winnings mentioned above. In the past year, it was 53.8 billion CZK. Players received back almost 93% of all the money they wagered.
