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@Marginal Value
£100m v £300m is a false equivalence.
The levy is 10% of horseracing-related bets. Which suggests punters are contributing circa £1 billion per year.
s.27A, Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act 1963
A bookmaker’s profits on leviable bets for a levy period are—
SM + OA-W
where—
SM is the aggregate of the stake money falling due to the bookmaker in the levy period on leviable bets;
OA is aggregate of any other amounts accruing to the bookmaker in the levy period in connection with leviable bets;
W is the aggregate of any winnings paid by the bookmaker in the levy period in respect of leviable bets (irrespective of when the bets were made or determined)
‘On affordability checks themselves they suck but as an industry racing is going to die if it doesn’t confront gambling harm. There’s only so many tabloid headlines the public will tolerate before we get regulated out of existence. I must admit I have never been asked, but I am only a recreational punter.’
We need to stop being governed by tabloid headlines as the public will also not tolerate increasing interference in their lives by large companies and the government. How long before other activities that are deemed harmful such as drinking and smoking become subject to affordability and/or health checks? Of course gambling causes harm but there is a balance to be struck here or you will see a lot of punters walking away.
I do not wish to get too political but it’s somewhat unavoidable here. As has been said on this forum, it is staggering that a Conservative government would oversee such intrusive checks being introduced. The right of adults to be trusted to make their own decisions is surely one of their core principles.
Chris Cook is imo the RP’s best writer and he interviewed the Head of the HBF this week.
I have to say that it wasn’t an interview that filled me with confidence.
Anyone who bets for a living, or supplements their main income from betting, might well have been aghast.
I am "The Horse Racing Punter" on Facebook
https://mobile.twitter.com/Ian_Davies_
https://www.facebook.com/ThePointtoPointNHandFlatracingpunter/
It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"“How long before other activities that are deemed harmful such as drinking and smoking become subject to affordability and/or health checks?”
You don’t need to ask that question. Smoking will be gone within a couple of decades max. Drinking, partly because the industry is engaging on limiting harm (all those zero alcohol beers, much less advertising to young people) is surviving and will continue to survive.
Gambling needs to choose which path it wants to go down. You can’t really fight tabloid headlines, that is the world we live in for good or bad. It might not be fair and I agree there are proper civil liberties arguments to be had but ultimately they are abstract, gambling suicides are not.
Gambling suicides are a serious problem but if measures are too draconian then a black market will open up and if people aren’t being protected by the licensed operators (and I would be inclined to agree that they aren’t) then they sure hell won’t be by the illegal ones.
One of the reasons I bring up alcohol is because I could go online right now and spend thousands on a vintage Champagne or a rare single malt and nobody would bat an eyelid. There would be no questions about where I got the money from or if I could afford it and as far as I am aware, nobody is suggesting such a thing should be implemented. Not yet at least.
I think perhaps the fact that you don’t receive an actual tangible product when you gamble may, rightly or wrongly, have something to do with it being treated differently.
I haven’t been following this topic too closely because it doesn’t affect me, so perhaps I’m not so well informed as I could be.
From what I know, I don’t understand how it’s been ‘allowed’ to get to this position.
I understand the concern over gambling, but then I also understand the concern over drinking, smoking and obesity etc. As far as I know, there are no plans by government to regulate how much alcohol you drink a week, how many fags you consume or how many calories you wish to digest.
There are two main points I question.
If gambling concerns are the driving force, then are there the same affordability checks in place for casinos (plus online), bingo, lottery tickets, slot machines etc? They all can, and on occasions do, lead to addiction and financial issues.
If they are not governed by the same rules, then why not? How does the racing industry allow itself to be targeted, when all other forms of gambling are not?
The second issue is personal freedom. If I work, save, invest, or not….what right does the government have to decide where I spend my OWN money?
If these checks are actually implemented, I would suspect too many racing enthusiasts would either stop betting or bet underground, because plenty of people will open up the opportunity for them. These affordability checks would kill off racing far quicker than the ‘Pink T-Shirt’ brigade.
As one or two of you may have noticed, my confidence that I wouldn’t fall foul of this process was misplaced.
Two weeks ago, I had a missed call from a number I didn’t recognise, so just deleted it. Half an hour later, a no reply email arrived asking me to contact BF. I immediately checked my account to find that a monthly deposit limit of £500 had been put on it with no prior warning. I had at least a dozen individual bets for that amount or more over the previous six weeks. I took the precaution of withdrawing all of my balance.
I clicked on the link in the email that activated their online chat, answered the two ‘security’ questions and got a msg saying I’d be transfered to an agent that could help me. Half an hour later, I was still waiting. Cancelled that session and started again, same two questions, same msg, but this time there was a follow up within a couple of minutes. Initially they wanted to set up a phone call, but I explained that I have severe tinnitus and phone conversations are very difficult for me, couldn’t we do this on the chat or by email.
This seemed to be interpreted as me being difficult, so I was then warned that a failure to co-operate could result in a further reduction of my deposit limit or suspension of my account. I never respond well to threats and at that point I took the line that I recommended on page 2 of this thread and also told them to close my account.
I felt that their entire attitude towards a customer of 22 years standing, who must have contributed a six figure sum in commission payments, and who had never had any previous interaction with BF staff, was intolerable. I did eventually get an apology from a senior manager by email, probably prompted by the publicity in the Post, but I declined his offer to return to trading on BF. Who wants to be betting with the knowledge that somebody is looking over their shoulder, under the dubious guise of monitoring what they call my ‘Safety and Wellbeing’.
I’ve no idea what information they would have requested from me, as we never got that far. But whatever it was, they weren’t going to get it. So that just leaves me with cash betting on course – always assuming that my bank will cheerfully accept cash withdrawals from my account!
While I sympathise, Alan, in all fairness – and having worked in the industry – I’d say they regard that six-figure commission as being what the people who lost to you paid them before handing the rest of your winnings to you.
Whether it’s exchanges or anything else, it’s the losers they value, not the winners.
I am "The Horse Racing Punter" on Facebook
https://mobile.twitter.com/Ian_Davies_
https://www.facebook.com/ThePointtoPointNHandFlatracingpunter/
It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"There is petition about affordability checks. You may wish to sign if you are opposed to them:
Signed it yesterday afternoon, it was just under 10k signatures and now it is just under 40k signatures, once it get to 100k signatures it will have to be considered for debate in Parliament.
It is interesting if you click on the link and go to the website it then has a link to a map that displays where the signatures are coming from. West Suffolk currently has the most signatures, with Thirsk & Malton and The Cotswolds and Newbury next.
Signed – thanks for the link
Could someone, please, post a link of the Chris Cook interview with Head of the HBF
Thanks APRacing, much appreciated. Pretty grim stuff. KYC checks and betting restrictions are bad enough but these affordability measures are draconian and intrusive
I like the way the total is live, three added on as I watched.
The things I want most in life are the things that I can't win.
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