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Two things seem clear to me.
1. Long term, Racing wants to remove betting on actual racing as an income source it is heavily dependant upon.
2. In two industries (betting and racing) where punters collectively lose to bookmakers and racing gets a cut (Levy) of bookmaker profits, that tiny number of punters who make betting pay long term are under severe threat as both bookmakers and racing want to make it impossible for them to continue.
Betting on horses is a skill, not a game of chance – and both big off-course bookmakers and racing hate that.
Other opinions welcomed as always.
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"I remember when Barney Curley had his famous rant at Luke Harvey, at one point he said “You are promoting a farce. No one tells the truth”.
And too many people in the racing media have been avoiding the truth recently, which is racing is on the brink of a crisis largely of its own making.
Racing made a fundamental mistake hitching itself to the bookmakers and their FOBTs. The appeal of these machines was obvious to the bookmakers. They attract addicts and losers and the bookmakers knew it was absolutely guaranteed money. They thought they were Golden geese that would keep on laying eggs.
What the bookmakers and the racing authorities failed to consider was the extent of the quite justified social and economic backlash against these machines.
While at the same time, bookmakers were either restricting or closing down accounts which showed a pattern of winning or getting on at the best prices.
Bookmakers should never have been involved with games of chance. Now by conflating these games with betting, they have managed to tar all gambling with the same brush. They have even managed to unite the Daily Mail and the Guardian!
If affordability checks come in, most punters will either give up or go to the bookmakers in the shadow economy. Not a penny of that money will go to the Levy.
I appreciate the snobbery towards betting is tedious. The Mail and the Guardian do not seem to get so upset by trading in stocks and shares, gold, Bitcoin, fine art etc. However, this situation should never have been allowed to develop. The betting shops should not have been allowed to have machines (like in Ireland) and bookmakers should not have been allowed to refuse a bet without good reason.
It is a mess mostly of the bookmakers and racing’s own making.
Oy maybe not the beginning of the end, but the beginning of a return to the early 90’s.
Because affordabilty checks are going to be very hard to enforce on course, and that market could be revived and made attractive again by an influx of punters that can’t get on elsewhere.
Maybe even a return of the commission agent, present on course and taking instructions over the phone. Much easier to establish that sort of line of communication now than it was in the early 90’s.
How do you even define ‘affordability’? There are plenty of people out there for whom even £10 a week is too much to lose right up to people who can blow tens of thousands up the wall and it doesn’t even touch the sides. What happens when someone loses their job? What do you do about those with fluctuating incomes? Even ignoring privacy concerns it’s an administrative nightmare unless you set a blanket cap. A blanket cap of course penalises those who can most afford to lose but still allows the poorest to lose too much.
With the shutting down of winning players, it’s a difficult one. How do you compel the bookie to take a bet? I’m not a lawyer obviously but I really don’t see what recourse you could possibly have in law if they refuse*. Their business, their rules. You’re not going to get a huge amount of public sympathy if you complain that you were unable to get a couple of grand on a horse.
*Happy of course to be corrected on matters of law should any of our learned friends be here.
It is not just the couple of grand punters who are being knocked back. Plenty of smaller stake punters are being refused as well.
Rishi Persad was on RTV recently and said he was told he could not have £25 each way on at 9/2. What reason does a multi million pound business have for refusing to take such a bet?
Haven’t read much about this, trying to block it out of my mind.
How is “affordability” going to be judged?
Income or Savings or both?If only the former, mine would read:
“Income – zero”.No job, not retired and not on any benefits either.
What right should a bookmaker / exchange have of looking at my savings?
I’d have big trust issues with that.Value Is Everything‘Rishi Persad was on RTV recently and said he was told he could not have £25 each way on at 9/2. What reason does a multi million pound business have for refusing to take such a bet?’
I quite agree that it’s ridiculous, I could afford to take that bet. Bookies can damn sure afford to lay to lose 5k, 50k, whatever. I just don’t see how you solve the problem as nobody has the right to get a bet on. If the books won’t take your bet, who do you take it up with?
‘What right should a bookmaker have of looking at my savings?’
This is the problem. I’m sure many would say affordability checks are a good idea for gambling (for the record I’m not one of them for all sorts of reasons) but where does it end? Is the landlord at my local going to ask if I can afford a few pints of beer and a packet of dry roasted? Are corner shop staff supposed to ask for a bank statement in order to be able to buy 20 B&H?
Addiction will happen, what we actually need to do is address that and leave the vast majority who are responsible to their own devices. I fully sympathise with addicts and they should have access to appropriate treatment. Banning or restricting anything achieves nothing and as has been mentioned, drives the problem underground.
“Is the landlord at my local going to ask if I can afford a few pints of beer and a packet of dry roasted? Are corner shop staff supposed to ask for a bank statement in order to be able to buy 20 B&H?”
Quite so. Unfortunately I do think there is a snobbish, class element underpinning this moral panic about gambling. Middle class busybodies who cannot bear the idea of reckless, working class oiks blowing their benefits in the bookies and leaving their poor wife and ragged children starving and destitute.
No one questions anyone trading in stocks and shares. I could get into far more debt maxing out my two credit cards and going to my overdraft limit than through a few bets during the week.
How about affordability checks for bookies? If a pony each way on a 9/2 is too much to ask then maybe we should tap the CEO on the shoulder, offer them a cup of coffee and ask if everything’s alright at home.
A bookies rep once explained to me that many bookmakers have a 20% rule:
For the bookmaker it is not about how much a punter stands to win on one single bet.
Strange as it may seem, it is not even necessarily about whether a punter is making an overall profit or loss at that particular moment in time.
It is more about whether that punter will go on to make consistent profits.
If a punter beats the SP by an average of more than 20% his / her account will be severely limited or closed.
ie If a punter is making a loss and yet his / her average bet is beating SP by over 20%, then the bookie knows it won’t be long before that punter will be making consistent profits… So severely limits or closes the account.
And if the punter is making a profit but his / her average bet is not beating SP by over 20% it will not be long before that punter is making a loss… So keeps the account open.
Value Is EverythingBugger the software.
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I've walked and I crawled on six crooked highwaysBookmakers are not legally obliged to lay bets, even at offered odds.
They routinely play the punter, not the bet anyway.
It’s annoying, but perfectly legal.
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"This is going to be wonderful.
It will present an opportunity to revisit the past and enjoy the experiences of pre-1961 times, such as shifty bookies’ runners wearing raincoats and flat caps sidling past acquiescent policemen on street corners, on their way to the nearest cotton mill or coal mine carrying their clock bags for reasons of bet integrity, and not asking for the balance on your Savings Account with Scottish Widows.
Come with me to the front parlour in Aunt Edna’s house where betting slips are being settled and money counted before the inevitable police raid brings operations to a temporary halt. Join the Anti-Welshers Support Group and run after bookmakers who won’t pay you.
It sounds like so much fun I’ll probably become an unlicensed operator myself when the time comes, probably using a prototype Bookmakers’ Pop-Up Shop.
Oyy!! Leave the Welsh out of it, we have our problems “‘ow are ewe, beaut” and when was the last time you saw a street-corner populated by a ‘bobbie’?
@IanDavies -and right on cue, look at these windy feckrs……..
Never thought I’d see the day but Billies gave me £20 at a boosted 36.75/1 and the rest at 33/1 !!!!
It will present an opportunity to revisit the past and enjoy the experiences of pre-1961 times
Yes, a strong off course Tote monopoly and on course only bookmakers. What’s not to like? Or if pool betting doesn’t appeal, launch a state controlled exchange.
No chance of it happening obviously.
Colin Phillips complains:
“Oyy!! Leave the Welsh out of it, we have our problems “‘ow are ewe, beaut”
It’s my understanding that a welsher was an English bookmaker who, unable or unwilling to settle his losses, fled into Wales to escape the attentions of wrathful punters. Presumably they laid low for a while amongst real Welsh people.
I’m really not sure how this worked in practice so don’t ask for more details.
Anyway, I hope you are pleased with yourselves for harbouring our bent bookmakers when you should have been kicking them back over the border like dutiful citizens.
I hope you are not still doing this.
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