Comment
Fixtures and fixings
andrew mccarron viewpoint
T
he opening lines of The Smiths’ song Panic had never been so appropri- ate in the past month, add in a few stanzas about Liver- pool, Manchester and West Bromwich and it would be horribly prophetic. This was the month that the transfor- mation in betting shops over the past 15 years - from pokey little smoke dens, almost surreptitiously exist- ing just off the high street to the gleaming chrome, open aired, glass fronted, cus- tomer-friendly retail units - seemed like a bad idea. One heave of a rubbish bin and rioters were in and causing damage, but famously unable to steal plasma TVs attached to the wall, despite three people hanging from it. Thanks to the security meas- ures most betting shops have these days all the looters would have got away with is a box of pens and the previous day’s Racing Post. Shop managers might have had to go and find their safes in the morning mind. As if there wasn’t already plenty of incentive to move off- shore…
Rioters aside, it appears one of the biggest threats to betting at the moment is coming from the sports on which they take bets. The insidious arguments for a ‘sports betting right’ seem to suggest that the sports need money from bookmakers in order to police against the corrupting influence of gam- bling.
Indeed, there have been some high profile instances of alleged corruption in sport at the moment. The Turkish FA made a rather bold and knee jerk reaction to remove Fenerbache from the Cham- pions League at the last minute because of a match fixing investigation which has jailed 31 people pending trial and questioned more than 100 people. In Greece, Super League clubs Olympiakos Volos and Kavala have been demoted to division four and more than 80 people have been charged with match-fixing. In Italy, no stranger to match fixing scandals with nothing to do with gambling, several
clubs have been given points deductions ahead of the new season with several players given long bans - a process which has been met with undue haste.
In sharp contrast, the Gambling Commission’s anti-corruption unit sets about its task quietly and methodically, like the prover- bial tortoise, making sure links can be established between the accused parties and where appropriate takes action ranging from a quiet word to the sporting authori- ties to making arrests. The smaller operators in the gambling industry may begrudge the expense of the industry’s regulator, but I’m sure that they would prefer any anti-corruption monies to be dealt with in the profes- sional manner of the Gam- bling Commission rather than the financial black holes in the majority of sporting bodies. Even FIFA, one of the richest and biggest sporting administrators in the world, has demonstrated its unpro- fessionalism this year. No wonder bookmakers begrudge giving them even more money through the ‘sporting right’. The truth is more of this corruption is being unmasked because of the increasing diligence and expertise of the betting industry and, if anything, the sports should be paying bookmakers for providing the tools and information which allow them to get their houses in order.
If sport as a whole wanted to take effective steps to end corruption then it should use its considerable lobbying power in the countries where large amounts of illegal gam- bling occur. Match fixers can pass unmonitored on the black market, so by encour- aging these jurisdictions to regulate the betting market, the less corruption is possi- ble. Also a legalised betting industry can then sponsor sporting organisations - a mutually beneficial transac- tion which will see sports get the extra money they are after. That way everybody wins and that’s an outcome we do want to fix.
38 BettingBusinessInteractive • SEPTEMBER 2011
Regulatory Re
A few months ago the Gambling Commission outlined the from the industry to make it easier. With the changes com Julia Mackisack, reminds betting operators about the step
REGULATION T
he regulatory returns that licence holders provide to the Commission
are used to inform our compliance work and to support our role to provide advice to govern- ment. We also provide the industry with an overview of the information we receive in the form of our industry statistics docu- ment which we publish twice a year.
After discussion with industry representatives and following a consulta- tion last year, we made
some changes to the infor- mation requested - this has already been commu- nicated to operators, but as the date for change - 3 October 2011 - is now looming, this is just a further reminder. In the meantime, all the new forms and new guidance notes are already avail- able on the Commission’s website to preview. To summarise the changes - all regulatory returns submitted on or after Monday 3 October 2011 require: • gross gambling yield (GGY)
• the number of active, inactive, new or disposed of premises • only the total number of staff employed per activity, regardless of the number of hours worked • the number of occa- sions when, after entering their premises, a person was unable to verify their age when challenged • a change to the way gambling by those who are under 18 (under 16 for lotteries) is recorded, by asking for the number of people who, having gambled, were unable to verify their age when
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