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I see that everyone’s favourite ex-banker now believes that levying horse race bettors until the pips squeak is the way to revive the sport.
He’s after high frequency traders on the racecourse! Apparently those who hire out racecourse rooms are doing so to act as 1000 bet an hour bookies.
Do The Rabble not see the absurdity of having their lackeys on the front page of the post claiming layers should be levied next to a headline about another bunch of races where layers were taken to the cleaners by insiders?
How much levy do you think they’d collect, even if they could enforce it? Given that every jockeys’ race and insider coup is levy deductable, there can’t be many layers this year that wouldn’t be demanding a rebate on the filth Roy and his chums serve up on a daily basis.
In fact looking at the early markets recently there hardly seem to be any layers left.
No idea what this latest wheeze is about but it sounds characteristically daft
the filth Roy and his chums serve up on a daily basis
…getting rid of Roy’s gutter filth and spreading the currently leviable a little less thinly on the somewhat more sanitary would seem logical, but we inhabit an illogical little world
There’s too much racing you banker!
Yawn, turn out the lights
It’s the old issue about whether there are people on exchanges who are trading "in the course of a business" and are therefore "bookmakers" under the levy legislation and therefore owe levy. Given that Betfair make extra charges on those of its customers who place more than 1000 bets per hour or make more than 20 data requests per second or who are consistently profitable, the argument is that these customers are acting "in the course of a business" and therefore owe levy. And given that Betfair get extra fees from these customers, they could probably afford to pay levy on their behalf
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It’s the old issue about whether there are people on exchanges who are trading "in the course of a business" and are therefore "bookmakers" under the levy legislation and therefore owe levy. Given that Betfair make extra charges on those of its customers who place more than 1000 bets per hour or make more than 20 data requests per second or who are consistently profitable, the argument is that these customers are acting "in the course of a business" and therefore owe levy.
And given that Betfair get extra fees from these customers, they could probably afford to pay levy on their behalf
Aren’t they already doing that – at exactly the same rate (10% of gross profit) as the bookmakers?
No – they pay 10% of their commission. Traditional bookmakers pay 10% of their gross win. Betfair customers who fall within the definition of "bookmaker" under the levy legislation should be paying 10% of their gross win but are not
Under the levy legislation definition they do, or at least they theoretically do. Whether anyone actually makes a profit acting as a bookmaker on betfair is a different point entirely.
Under Paul Roy’s bizarre definition (ie anyone hiring out a box on the racecourse) they don’t and aren’t required to.
Sorry Glenn, I don’t think that’s what he’s saying. Betfair has always said there aren’t people acting as "bookmakers" on the exchange because they are not in business. He’s saying that if people are placing more than 1000 bets/hour or making more than 20 data requests per second and hiring boxes at racecourses etc that’s a pretty clear indication that they are not casual punters but are doing it as a business. And if they don’t make any profit, there’s no gross win for them to pay levy on.
I can see the Roy masterplan clearly now.
Make the racing so rancid that you’re forced to drip feed in 250 fourpenny bets (counts as 1000 transactions with edits and cancellations) every time you want a tenner on.
You then get classed as acting as a business.
I know hardly any of you buy the
Racing Post
anymore, but if you want a good cry about the state of the game and where it’s going, have a read of the Paul Roy interview today.
It starts off with him trotting out the tired old garbage that they have cracked down on corruption and that their integrity unit is widely seen as representing best practice.
By whom exactly? Barney Curley? Tony Sopprano?He then goes on to the expanding fixture list. He fails to link the dots between this and integrity, but given that he’s put his head in the sand about the integrity problem at the start of the interview that’s hardly surprising.
He claims "We don’t really know what the incremental income for racing has been compared with the cost of staging these [extra betting shop dross] fixtures". Why is that I wonder? Is it because the bookies don’t care about their racing revenue from these fixtures only their overall revenue? It should be quite obvious, several years after asking the bookies for this data and not getting it, that it is too embarassing for them to disclose. It would make it blindingly obvious that these meetings are being demanded for the sole purpose of filling their zombie machines. Why are The Rabble such complete and utter mugs?
He then goes on about levying drip feeders on Betfair
before worrying about exchanges lowering SP margins. Where has this guy been? Did he not catch the SP reforms of a few years back that handed over the SP mechanism to three tramps at Kempton Park?He finishes by seeing the tote as somehow his or The Rabble’s. Surely it belongs to racing’s stakeholders, such as you and I, not THEM.
So there you have it. The move to a profits based levy has proved tremendously succesful… for the zombie machines. The trouble as Roy sees it is that racing has to widen its competitive disadvantage to engulf not just betting suppliers but also betting customers. In an age where the optimum margin for gambling has once again been confirmed as circa a few percent, the takeout of the roulette wheel, by the success stories of poker/zombie machines/exchanges, Roy wants to increase racing’s betting margins from their already uncompetitive rates. Unbelieveable!
By whom exactly? Barney Curley? Tony Sopprano?- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.