Today I came across a great article about the current state of Australian online bookmakers and how they are killing the Australian racing markets. The article can be found here and it restates what has already been said many times before. I had a similar article in mind but Daniel says it much clearer then I ever could.
I just want to reinforce one small part of Daniels argument here. In his article he says:
“Corporate Bookmakers convinced the NT Government that the problem with being forced to accept bets up to a certain level is that multiple punters will all get on the same horse at exactly the same time, which means their liability is increased beyond the minimum. That’s total rubbish. Modern technology allows operating systems to react within a fraction of a second… it would be virtually impossible for multiple punters to make a bet before a Bookmaker’s system could automatically react and reduce the odds or even suspend that horse while they make a decision on the new price.”
The law for on-course bookmakers is that they must take every bet from ever punter to lose a certain amount. The online corporate bookmakers used the above reason to allow themselves the right to close any customers accounts and not accept bets if they didn’t want to.
Why the NT Licensing Commission took the bookmakers word instead of doing the above test is beyond me. I could understand they would want to do anything to keep the bookies happy if they were making a large amount of money via taxes, but they have a cap of just $250,000 for each bookmaker. So there must be another explanation that I do not know.
I feel they won’t be changing any rules soon so if we want things to change then we need to have the sports and racing governing bodies creating these rules. Victoria racing just increased the taxes bookmakers must pay them. While this in itself is a terrible idea, it shows that they have the power to make a change that the bookmakers have no choice but to follow. They either follow the rules or stop accepting any bets on Victorian races. So we need these bodies to also state in their rules that if a bookmaker wants to accept bets on their sport, they must accept bets from every single punter up to a certain amount and not close accounts. If each sporting body added this rule then this problem would be solved.
Currently its like the wild west for online bookmakers and they are making as much money as they can before they kill their own golden goose. Once racing has been destroyed then these rules will be implemented, by then it will be too late.