Comment
World Racing Entertainment
andrew mccarron viewpoint
I
n a bid to make itself more palatable to the public by the restricting of the whip, racing has managed to cock up the implementation leading to uproar from jockeys who are against counting to five in the final furlong. However, the posturing and the controversy surrounding the issue might have accidentally unearthed the key for raising the sport’s profile. The much craved after media coverage of Richard Hughes’ retirement over the whip rules, alongside a toing and froing threat of strike action, could well have paved the way for a publicity hungry Racing for Change. Bascially make horseracing more like American wrestling!
The media loves a bit of aggro and
doesn’t care whether it is manufactured or not, so if racing can provide a steady stream of it then the media profile of the sport could soar. It just depends on how prepared racing is to cheapen itself to catch the attention of Joe Public. Imagine the frission when two jockeys who have been bad mouthing each other in the press for a month finally go head to head in a race, or when one stable ‘steals’ a horse from another using a renegade stable boy, who then races that horse against the old trainer. Introduce some fake storylines, create a narrative and give people a reason to return to the racing pages of a newspaper for the latest twists. You could even steal the stories wholesale from wrestling; it wouldn’t be such a big leap. They already wear stupid colourful outfits. They should stop short of the deciding who should win beforehand though, otherwise the Gambling Commission might step in. Such a move will make a lot more sense than Racing Enterprises’ suggestion to allow betting in pubs. Alcohol and gambling are not comfortable bedfellows. I lived in Australia for a while and it seemed the country’s extensive gambling problems stemmed from allowing its pubs to operate numerous high stakes ‘pokie’ machines coupled with their TAB windows in sportsbook dedicated bar areas.
With some politicians apparently
concerned over the proliferation of betting shops, are they really going to pass legislation that could essentially increase the number of betting outlets by a factor of five?
People in the pub who want to bet can do online or via the telephone. Most of them could even go to the betting shop next door. There is no need to formalise this by bringing betting into the pub, regardless of how many Wetherspoons are showing Racing UK.
42 BettingBusinessInteractive • NOVEMBER 2011 Tracking down the aliens
John Samuels of IBAS discusses the need to routinely check alien bets for mistakes. His newly renamed book ‘Down The Bookies’, which covers the history of betting shops, was published at the end of October by Racing Post books.
C
onsider this ques- tion? What is the record for the number of times a betting shop
customer could place a bet that is not acceptable under the bookmaker’s trading rules, before the shop staff noticed and informed the customer? Three or four times maybe? How about if that customer
had placed the same bet, on most days of the week, for over six years?!
A customer brought an issue to the attention of IBAS whereby he had been placing greyhound tricast doubles for many years, with the same high street operator, and at the same shop. It was only when he was in another part of town and tried to place the same bet that he was told by an employee, from the same company, that the bet was not acceptable under the operator’s published rules. Upon raising the issue with the head office of the bookmaker, he was told that his bets would be settled as split stake tricast singles if any had won. The customer was left somewhat astounded, if not speechless, at this news, wondering why he had been allowed to place the same bet with identical instructions for many years.
Unfortunately, it could not be deter- mined if any of the tricast selections, included
in the doubles, had been suc- cessful. Understandably, the ‘losing’ tricast double bet receipts had not been kept by the customer.
Although none of the tricast doubles had won, the customer brought the matter to the attention of IBAS out of a sense of injus- tice. To cut a fairly long story short the operator subse- quently made an ex gratia payment to the customer, as a gesture of goodwill, to acknowledge the unique cir- cumstances of the situation. This discretionary payment was considered to be a rea- sonable one and was accepted by the customer. However, in these days of EPOS tills, betting shop employees are trained to translate all recognised, conventional bets onto the bet acceptance and settling system and manually file unusual bets separately as ‘alien’. The alien bets to be subsequently manually settled should any be suc- cessful.
One would have reason- ably expected that of all the
employees that must have passed through the shop during the six year period, and would have treated the bets as ‘Alien’ i.e. could not be translated into the EPOS bet acceptance system, at least one of them would have noticed that these invalid bets were being placed repeatedly and by the same customer.
A suggestion therefore for operators with EPOS systems; before IBAS is approached by a customer with a similar tale of woe, could it be considered that, if not every day, at least on some occasions, those bets that have been treated by shop staff as ‘alien’ on the EPOS system should be viewed to see what is actu- ally being classed and trans- lated into this category. It is understood that winning ’alien’ and manu- ally settled bets are rou- tinely viewed and checked by Head Office, but maybe once in a while losing ‘alien’ bets could also be viewed. Who knows what else might be lurking there?
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