It’s been interesting to hear the concerns of racing authorities surrounding in-play betting on sport.
In-play wagering – allowing punters to bet online on sporting events while a match is underway – is outlawed in Australia, but that position is being considered as former NSW premier Barry O’Farrell leads a review of the Interactive Gambling Act.
Bookies want it legalised because of the action it generates – which they claim is happening anyway, but flowing to overseas bookmakers unregulated and untaxed.
Racing is dead against it because it sucks away its lifeblood: the punting dollar. Australian racing offers a new event to bet on every few minutes, 364 days a year – a volume of punting opportunity unmatched by other sports locally. But allow constant in-play betting on sport, and the minute-to-minute punting focus expands from the racetrack to the wider sporting landscape.
Sure. But as a punter, you can’t help thinking the authorities’ focus is wrong. Racing has a few issues of its own it should get in order itself before it worries about external threats.
Racing obviously needs punters like no other sport. Moreover, it needs volume turnover to sustain the non-stop calendar of events. Yet even at the most basic level, racing often fails the punters it so critically needs.
Speak to any number of them about the game, and before long you’ll hear about a stack of issues that can be summed up in two simple words: getting on.
Punt regularly, and you start to learn. Learn, and you become a better punter (and probably wager more too, incidentally).
As you become a better punter? It gets harder and harder to actually have a bet.
The same bookies who saturate the screens with their odds simply refuse to take your action the moment they suspect you might be anything other than a total dimwit.
It’s an obvious equation, but seems lost on those who run racing. It’s ludicrous to think that just below the noise about losing the punting dollar, there’s more than a few people actually trying to bet on racing – and bet on it regularly – and they’re not able to.
It starts with stake limiting, when you place a wager but are told only half of it has been “accepted”. From there it’s a slippery slope as the accepted amounts get lower and lower.
Some take this approach to the extreme. To take one such example, one well-known bookmaker once took one of my $50 stakes and reduced it to seven cents. Yes, that’s $0.07.
It gets to the point where even if a bookie isn’t just flat rejecting your bets – which some certainly will – they may as well be.
To be fair the issue hasn’t gone completely ignored. To their eternal credit, Racing NSW last year introduced minimum bet regulations: any bookmaker wishing to hold money on NSW races is now required to accept any bet where the punter can win up to $2,000.
But still, things aren’t as simple as they should be. For starters, don’t expect all bookmakers to actively abide by the regulations. As I’ve experienced, at least one prominent agency will still automatically limit and reject your bets on NSW races.
When queried, their curt response amounted to “that’s the decision we’ve made and it’s final”. It wasn’t until I insisted they were bound by regulations – twice more – that I was passed to a member of management, who outlined the process required for me to be “approved” – including a statutory declaration stating that I was in fact who I claimed to be, along with certified copies of my ID and proof of residence.
The process was akin to applying for a passport.
Bear in mind, this is a bookmaker I’d joined months earlier and already confirmed my identity with as part of their verification process. Who’d taken every bet I’d asked for on any event without question, until they decided I wasn’t losing enough.
Apparently it’s for security reasons. But the timing and process makes it clear: security only matters if we’re not getting enough of your cash. Keep losing? No questions asked.
After some back and forth and submission of documentation, my bets on NSW races are now accepted – albeit after delayed ‘approval’, which gets interesting when betting close to race time – the very type of live betting the industry is worried about losing.
Other jurisdictions, most notably Victoria, have yet to follow the lead on minimum betting rules. There’s no recourse for those banned by their bookmakers from betting on racing in other Australian states. It’s hard to think of any industry which so willingly shoos away loyal customers who actually want to spend – let alone one which is also so vocal about losing turnover.
Racing is inherently a good product which can survive and thrive against competition from other forms of gambling. But it might be time for the industry to concentrate on improving the offer, rather than seeking to have competition banned. Make it easy and make it convenient, but most importantly, get rid of the barriers that punters experience.
And the bookies? It’s a numbers game. Bookmaking may again involve framing and maintaining a market, rather than just publishing a price and then banning any customer who doesn’t lose. A bookmaker who can’t make money running a market at 120 per cent should probably think about a new line of business.
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