- This topic has 15 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 14 years, 9 months ago by
.
- Posts
Sounds unlikely doesn’t it, but there is one quiet success story in the world of horserace betting, where turnover has almost doubled in the last five years.
Surprisingly, to me at least, it’s the Tote Placepot.
Having spotted what looked a bigger pool than I’d have expected when I checked the results page after a friend won the placepot one evening last week, I added up the figures for the 26 meetings staged last week Sept 6th – 12th inclusive.
The total bet was over £2.1M, with only two meetings failing to top £50k. Even the much derided twilight AW meetings proved popular with over £60k bet on Weds – Fri and £47k on Saturday.
Looking back five years, the numbers were much smaller – e.g. Tuesday total for three meetings up from £106k to £222k, Saturday from £251k to £465k.
That much turnover means that the Tote takeout for the week amounted to exactly £569,458. Multiply that by 50 and it’s a substantial amount of money, so where does it all go?
This is the depressing part – most of it I reckon goes to the owners of the betting shops that have the Tote Direct terminals. The commission paid by Tote Direct is 20% – 20p of every £1 stake stays with the shop owner. For them it’s a no risk deal and the more money they take, the more profit as their costs are fixed.
According to the Tote 2009 annual report, 98% of shops now have Tote Direct terminals, a figure that almost certainly explains the increase in the Placepot pools. The report also states that the ratio of on course to off course money in the Tote pools generally has changed from 50/50 five years ago, to 72.6% off course in 2009.
The annual report also contains a figure of £38.9M as the total commissions paid in 2009 – I think that figure may also include the commission the Tote pay to the courses as their share of on course turnover. But my guess would be that the majority of that sum is paid to bookmakers by the Tote via Tote Direct.
So the Tote/racing have a success story, but it’s the bookmakers that make the most financial gain – deja vu all over again! It’s something for any potential new owner of the Tote to consider before making a bid.
It would also be worth a look by a journalist that can dig a bit deeper into the figures than I can, to find out precisely where all that takeout from the Placepot is going.
AP
It’s something I was already looking into ap – the turnaround for information requests with the Tote makes me wonder whether Phil Smith is moonlighting there – though whether I have an appropriate platform to air my views could be another matter…..
Many thanks for the helpful post all the same.
Alan, catch 22, where would I get a placepot/tote bet without the betting shop/online/telephone.
£120 a day 8000 betting shops = £1M
not sure, but seem to remember paying a fee for accepting tote bets.
Where do you get the figure of 20p commission AP? The figures I usually hear quoted are 13.5-15p.
It is a ridiculous situation though. The tote was set up by Winston Churchill to protect people from having to deal with bookies. Eighty years on and the only way of getting a reasonable deal on tote bets is to go via a bookie through the ludicrously named Tote Direct. The tote even talk about bookies as partners and, I believe, have non-competitive agreements with them!
Why, in this day and age, the tote are asking for 27p+ in the pound for those who bet direct through their website and less than half that from those going through intemediaries is hard to fathom.
Bets like the placepot are surely the future IMHO. Betting exchanges make it too easy for people with one piece of, usually negative, information to clean up. Asking them to perm that info with their opinions on five other races and the cheats’ edge evaporates.
Glenn,
You may well be right about the commission – I’m fairly sure it’s 20p on Scoop6 bets, but that’s what I meant about someone investigating deeper than I can. Certainly there’s no easy way to find out the correct figure! It’s hard enough just to find confirmation of the total takeout from the various pools.
Barry,
No argument from me that the availability of the bet has been the key to the growth in turnover. I was really just trying to highlight that the Tote isn’t necessarily the financial saviour of racing as some seem to think, but that a good deal of the ‘profit’ goes elsewhere.
As for the fee, again that highlights the need for more investigation. Is that a one-off when the terminal is installed, or an annual payment – or both?
AP
Alan, catch 22, where would I get a placepot/tote bet without the betting shop/online/telephone….
if you were in France then, via the co-mingling arrangement with the UK Tote, you’d head for a bar, cafe, news-stand.
do UK newsagents still process pools coupons ? lottery tickets ? why not other pool betting ?
might any of the increased figures be down to French, etc money now going into the UK placepot ?
I asked this on another thread without any joy: is anyone aware whether large-staking punters get rebates betting with Tote UK, as they would in many places abroad?
on a quick word search, the word "rebate" appears:
– 9 times in the latest HKJC financials
– 0 times in the latest UK Tote financials
Alan,
15% comm all bets other than scoop 6 20%
annual fees only £20 per shop.
many shops offer discount on large wagers.
ie, £1000 SCOOP 6 FOR £900.
Dave Nevison mentioned in his second book, the Jackpot and Scoop 6 take-outs were 29 and 30 percent respectively, with "several bookmakers offering cashback to big players" of 10 percent. Bringing the overound down to 119-120 per cent or just over 3 percent per race.
Wit,
Co-mingling with the PMU only occurs on a few races a week. I’ve seen win and place and the occasional exacta offered by them but not the placepot.
Pru,
Shhhhhhhhh. I think the rebates come from bookies with tote direct rather than the tote themselves, or so I’m told. When I’ve approached the tote themselves for a rebate they’ve mentioned some non-discounting agreement they had with their bookmaker partners.
The tote themselves occasionally offer to enter you in a raffle for a fiver or offer occasional rebates with catches in small print.
Alan,
15% comm all bets other than scoop 6 20%
annual fees only £20 per shop.
many shops offer discount on large wagers.
ie, £1000 SCOOP 6 FOR £900.
I’ve always thought of opening up my own bookies…and then immediately closing it down for indefinite ‘refurbishment’.
Does anyone know what sort of tribute I’d have to pay the Gambling Commission for a betting shop that had the closed sign permanently up and didn’t have any customers other than myself?
Indeed, Glenn. I already knew the answer to this but am trying to establish whether the situation on Tote rebates – whatever it actually is – is widely known. I think I can now guess at what the answer is. I will now shut up.
I monitored the Placepot totals again last week to see if the Betfred takeover had made any difference, and also to see if the concentration of racing on Saturday discussed elsewhere had affected Placepot betting.
The figures again make interesting reading – the total bet last week (Mon 4th to Sun 10th inclusive) was £2,617,667, providing the Tote with income of just over £700k thanks to the 27% takeout.
Saturday was much the best day with £645k bet at six meetings, but the average only dropped below £70k per meeting on Wednesday.
On Saturday, Ascot, Newmarket and York all produced six figure pools and the £177k bet on the York placepot was higher than the total amount bet into the Scoop6 on the same day.
And the Placepot does all this without any TV coverage, with minimal marketing, with archaic rules regarding late non runners – just think what it could achieve for racing if it got the same level of attention as the Scoop6 and an agreement to pay 6% of the pool (i.e 1% per race involved in the bet) directly into a prize money pool.
AP
Placepot turnover figures can be very informative. They show why The Rabble’s methods just haven’t worked. You may recall Savill believing that doubling the races put on doubled levy and Rod Street’s deep understanding of the subject is summed up in his latest blog: ‘Saturday’s maximise income for the industry – period.’ But hey, who needs an understanding of a subject when you can come out with such platitudes?
All other things being equal, as the number of meetings in a session rises linearly, placepot turnover rises logarithmically.
ie for one meeting turnover would be 100k, for two meetings it would be 130k (ie 65k ave), three meetings 148k and four meetings 160k (40k average).
Alan,
As I say here
https://theracingforum.co.uk/horse-r … 86985.html
it’s not surprising that the placepot does better than the scoop6 and jackpot as it’s just about the only tote exotic that isn’t broken – the only one that regularly has a pool size (relative to its difficulty) large enough to actually pay out.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.