YET MORE STREETS SUPPOSEDLY PAVED WITH GOLD

The idea of opening a casino popped up first as the strange brainchild of the odd individual football club. Then, suddenly, every club seemed to want one - after pay-per-view, stock-market floats and shops in the far east, "gaming" became the new pot of gold, the next guaranteed money-spinner at the end of the football rainbow.

Newcastle were one of the first, their chairman Freddy Shepherd announcing in November 2003 the sale of land above St James' metro station to the Las Vegas casino company, MGM Mirage, which was proposing to build apartments, a hotel and leisure facilities alongside "a Las Vegas-style casino of approximately 100,000 square feet".

In October last year Leeds, still grappling with huge debts after their high-rolling years living the dream, sold land next to Elland Road for £5m to the gambling group Stanley, which announced plans for a huge casino, costing £125m.

Birmingham City then announced that their very future is based on a new 55,000-seat stadium being built for them by a casino operator. Rangers unveiled a super-casino plan and have now become the first to be granted outline planning permission.

Sheffield United, too, have developed detailed proposals for an £80m casino, and dozens more clubs, in the Premier League and below, have held discussions about allying themselves with huge casinos.

Not fully realised, perhaps, during this time, was that when the government began to consider liberalising gambling laws to allow unlimited super-casinos, one American operator, Las Vegas Sands, specifically targeted football clubs as its best way into huge expansion in Britain.

The company is behind the plans at Birmingham, Rangers and Sheffield United, and Rodney Brody, Las Vegas Sands' head of development in the UK and Europe, told me he had talked to many other clubs about developing Vegas-style casinos alongside their grounds, including Arsenal, Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, West Ham, Middlesbrough, Sunderland, Hull City and Ipswich. Many clubs were eagerly lining up to do business, when, last April, the government retreated following an outcry over the plans.

Instead, the government will now grant just one super-casino licence nationwide, in 2007, a pilot scheme which will test whether crime, debt and gambling addiction do indeed increase, as campaigning groups have warned.

Many towns and cities will compete for the licence, because they regard the casinos as major investment for depressed areas. However Blackpool, whose council first conceived of casinos-as-regeneration, hoping for Atlantic City-style reinvention, remains the favourite.