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Anyone who takes their racing seriously knows that
LADBROKES
are licensed thieves,they offer the worst incentives of any High st Bookmaker going and yet Joe Punter falls for it every Saturday,they are still the most recognised outfit trading under such a banner,i cant believe they or any other Bookmaker are prepared to ‘Single Man’ a Shop at anytime of the day. Shocking!
If a customer goes into a supermarket and only purchases the loss leader items, do they get banned from shopping in there?
To treat betting shops as a business offering a product is wrong, they offer a service to relieve the unsuspecting public of their money for little or no reward. I think I can categorically state that no punter in the land can earn a living purely by going into betting shops and placing winning bets.
If a customer goes into a supermarket and only purchases the loss leader items, do they get banned from shopping in there?
To treat betting shops as a business offering a product is wrong, they offer a service to relieve the unsuspecting public of their money for little or no reward. I think I can categorically state that no punter in the land can earn a living purely by going into betting shops and placing winning bets.
Agreed Eclipse,Bookmakers are quick to Ban the successful punter but will do their best to keep the ‘Addict’, who might have a successful business but cant help themselves losing fortunes to the likes of
LADBROKES
,i have seen £3000 cash trebles thrown on the floor by these sorts who obviously need help.Very sad that we all know compulsive gamblers from our local areas but we all conveniently turn a blind eye to them convincing ourselves it wont be me next! Bookmakers draw these vulnerables from society like Pubs draw alcoholics and they call it business!
Anyone who takes their racing seriously knows that
LADBROKES
are licensed thieves,they offer the worst incentives of any High st Bookmaker going and yet Joe Punter falls for it every Saturday,they are still the most recognised outfit trading under such a banner,i cant believe they or any other Bookmaker are prepared to ‘Single Man’ a Shop at anytime of the day. Shocking!
So why do you bet with them in your aftertiming thread?
Anyone who takes their racing seriously knows that
LADBROKES
are licensed thieves,they offer the worst incentives of any High st Bookmaker going and yet Joe Punter falls for it every Saturday,they are still the most recognised outfit trading under such a banner,i cant believe they or any other Bookmaker are prepared to ‘Single Man’ a Shop at anytime of the day. Shocking!
So why do you bet with them in your aftertiming thread?
I explained the reasons why in my aftertiming thread Scottf..f..s!
The tirades continue but, predictably, no answers to my question:
If you owned the business would you simply allow certain customers to affect your profits without taking any action?
That’s a bit unfair, Steeple.
Bookmakers are greedy, cheating, tight, filthy scumbags.
The tirades continue but, predictably, no answers to my question:
If you owned the business would you simply allow certain customers to affect your profits without taking any action?
Well I think bookmakers have to be looked at differently to other businesses.
Part of the ‘product’ bookmakers sell is the hope that one can win money betting with them. To effectively say that we’re happy to take your bets as long as you don’t actually win, uncategorically destroys that ambition.
If they are selling the dream of lucrative gain then totally dashing it, it sends a really unpalatable message.
So to answer your question, if I owned the business then yes, I would allow punters to win (safe in the knowledge that hardly any of them will!).
I would also ensure that my marketing department let the whole world know that I was the bookmaker that didn’t ban the punter.
Mike
The tirades continue but, predictably, no answers to my question:
If you owned the business would you simply allow certain customers to affect your profits without taking any action?
Well I think bookmakers have to be looked at differently to other businesses.
Part of the ‘product’ bookmakers sell is the hope that one can win money betting with them. To effectively say that we’re happy to take your bets as long as you don’t actually win, uncategorically destroys that ambition.
If they are selling the dream of lucrative gain then totally dashing it, it sends a really unpalatable message.
So to answer your question, if I owned the business then yes, I would allow punters to win (safe in the knowledge that hardly any of them will!).
I would also ensure that my marketing department let the whole world know that I was the bookmaker that didn’t ban the punter.
Mike
Then you wouldn’t be in business very long.
Margins are tight – maybe 2 to 3 percent net in most shops. I know of at least one shop which was taking £1m a year plus and it closed last year.
Whatever business you were in – butcher, baker, bookmaker, you could not allow a controllable factor to eat into your profits. Taking no action means a failed business.
From the comfortable position of not having to do it, you might believe you would welcome all to your betting shop and ban nobody, but you’d be over-run by the sharpies in no time at all and left with nothing but your pipedream.
As for boolies being in a ‘different’ business – there are no different (non-subsidised) businesses – you make a profit or you fail, that is the only way it can be measured.
From the comfortable position of not having to do it, you might believe you would welcome all to your betting shop and ban nobody, but you’d be over-run by the sharpies in no time at all and left with nothing but your pipedream.
Well until retiring last year I had run my own business for more than 20 years, so I would humbly suggest I may have some vague idea about profit margins and decent business practice.
One can still be defensive, one can still lay off ‘shrewdies’ all day long and even use their knowledge to trim one’s own prices. As you correctly say though, I don’t have to do it, do I?
I would still be interested to know how much banning all these supposed ‘faces’ (I guarantee that many of them are just Joe Blow on a good run!) really saves global companies like Ladbrokes.
The original point of leaving one person alone in a cash-intensive business even at night is unarguably despicable and dangerous in my view.
Mike
The tirades continue but, predictably, no answers to my question:
If you owned the business would you simply allow certain customers to affect your profits without taking any action?
Well I think bookmakers have to be looked at differently to other businesses.
Part of the ‘product’ bookmakers sell is the hope that one can win money betting with them. To effectively say that we’re happy to take your bets as long as you don’t actually win, uncategorically destroys that ambition.
If they are selling the dream of lucrative gain then totally dashing it, it sends a really unpalatable message.
So to answer your question, if I owned the business then yes, I would allow punters to win (safe in the knowledge that hardly any of them will!).
I would also ensure that my marketing department let the whole world know that I was the bookmaker that didn’t ban the punter.
Mike
Then you wouldn’t be in business very long.
Margins are tight – maybe 2 to 3 percent net in most shops. I know of at least one shop which was taking £1m a year plus and it closed last year.
Whatever business you were in – butcher, baker, bookmaker, you could not allow a controllable factor to eat into your profits. Taking no action means a failed business.
From the comfortable position of not having to do it, you might believe you would welcome all to your betting shop and ban nobody, but you’d be over-run by the sharpies in no time at all and left with nothing but your pipedream.
As for boolies being in a ‘different’ business – there are no different (non-subsidised) businesses – you make a profit or you fail, that is the only way it can be measured.
If they bookmakers cannot staff their shops adequately and still be in profit then they should be closed. A few thousand less shops in the country might mean more money in the economy was put to a more constructive use. If one regards excessive betting as being equally unhealthy as excessive drinking, smoking or eating, then something that makes it harder to place a bet could have a more positive effect upon the country in general.
The tirades continue but, predictably, no answers to my question:
If you owned the business would you simply allow certain customers to affect your profits without taking any action?
To continue the ‘business’ analogy: winning punters are in effect ‘competitors’ in that they diminish profit of the bookmaker by being in possession of a better business model. Therefore the bookmaker – like any business worth the name – should do its utmost to gather as much information on the practices of this more efficient competitor
A difficult procedure in many a business as the more efficient competitor will do his utmost not to reveal his methods. But for the bookmaker it’s easy-peasy: his competitor – the winning punter – reveals his hand every time he places a bet. Valuable information worth having, particularly if it’s not available to the bookmaker’s rather more obvious competitors, other bookmakers
Why? Well it seems simple enough to me. One of the cornerstones of bookmaking is the balancing of fieldbooks and the managing of liabilities by hedging with other bookmakers i.e bookmakers are punters too. Therefore privileged information from a winning punter can only be beneficial to the bookmaker when in hedging (punting) mode. Surely?
So, given the above I don’t understand why bookmakers restrict or ban winning punters when by doing so they remove a source of information that may well give them an edge over other bookmakers
All of which are hardly revelatory words but I don’t understand, I really don’t
Drone, you are correct in that some bookmakers do indeed allow losing accounts to remain open because those customers provide valuable information. I’d be pretty sure that in most cases this is an open agreement.
For example (possibly an extreme one) if Michael Tabor calls Mike Dillon and asks for £50k on an unraced horse for the Guineas at, say, 10/1, MT will get the bet in full. In exchange Ladbrokes, know they are far too long on that horse and will take appropriate action.
Now, they could refuse the bet and still know that they are too long on the horse but MT would not call them again.
I believe that ‘inside information’, as it is generally understood by the everyday punter, is vastly exaggerated. (I was introduced to three owners at Aintree once; each had a horse in the same race. Each owner told me his horse was a good thing – none finished in the first three)
True inside information is hugely precious and quite rare and very well protected.
I wouldn’t mind betting that 99% of punters ‘restricted’ by bookmakers never base selections on inside info. These people only pop up when there is a price error (or perceived one), or want to bet EW at favourable terms or are simply very talented form students who put a huge amount of work in.
Perhaps it’s me but I simply cannot understand the vitriol aimed at bookmakers who are simply doing a bloody good job of running a business.
"There are no bookmakers anymore!" cry aggrieved punters when what they actually mean is there are no punters any more. The late Freddie Williams was feted as a proper bookie who’d lay a bet: he was the opposite, a punter who took a view and hoped he was right more often than wrong.
A bookmaker’s job – by definition – is to balance a book, to ensure that whatever wins he makes a profit. Impossible to do in every event, but it doesn’t mean the bookmaker should stop trying.
If they bookmakers cannot staff their shops adequately and still be in profit then they should be closed. A few thousand less shops in the country might mean more money in the economy was put to a more constructive use. If one regards excessive betting as being equally unhealthy as excessive drinking, smoking or eating, then something that makes it harder to place a bet could have a more positive effect upon the country in general
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Hmm, have you consulted the staff many on this thread seem so eager to ‘protect’? Plenty of them would lose their jobs were your ideas adopted.
Some protection.
Its called market forces, however it does not simply come down to a question of economics. Apart from allowing successive governments of all hues to massage the unemployment figures, what service do betting shops provide that has any benefit to society as a whole?
If you could tell every punter how much money they were going to lose over the course of the year and gave them the option of losing it as they would naturally or donating it to charity, what would be their choice? I honestly cannot say I know their answers but I know what I would hope.
Its called market forces, however it does not simply come down to a question of economics. Apart from allowing successive governments of all hues to massage the unemployment figures, what service do betting shops provide that has any benefit to society as a whole?
And what service to society is provided by pubs, burger joints, tanning parlours, lap-dancing clubs, chinese takeaways, etc?
Unless someone took the time to make a detailed study of the socio-economic impact of every business then that would be very hard to argue.
However, any restaurant or food vending business provides food, which is an essential requirement for life. The pub was once a place of social meeting and relaxation though with the advent of televisions in pubs it is less so. A tanning salon can be used for those suffering from psoriasis or other skin conditions to relieve the symptoms. A Lap-dancing club is used by the sexually inadequate with too much disposable income to waste and the inability to confront their inadequacies in a meaningful way that might actually lead to a long term cure.
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