Gambling sponsorship ban?

Hey Jim Steward.

What do you think of "laying the favourite' is it a practise you would encourage

Epiphany Proudfoot said:

Hey Jim Steward.

What do you think of "laying the favourite' is it a practise you would encourage

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Go on I’ll bite. I wouldn’t encourage you to lay a favourite unless you thought it’s odds on the exchange were shorter than they should be and the reverse for backing. But then you probably knew that and gamblers bore you don’t they?

Not necessarily Jim. I actually find your posts interesting. I was more referring to the online badgers who just sit there absorbed in their sad soccer predictions blah blah

You Sir....know your stuff.

Good reply to laying the favourite too.

One last word on the tax issue. It’s emerged over the last few days that the owners of bet 365 the Coates family have paid tax of £573 million pounds in the last year. The Done brothers (betfred) have paid £191 million.
I admit to be a bit torn over this because on the one hand it’s an obscene amount of profit made and 365 in particular are marketing experts and have made hay. On the other hand their tax contributions alone pay for 62,000 state pensions. They have no high st outlets and will have their turnover massively hit if the proposed limits come to fruition. That is just one example of tax contributions. As said the Done brothers also pay a huge amount and then you have the countless other firms.
Look after the problem punters by all means but do it sensibly because this country is Donald ducked as it is and the treasury can ill afford to lose this kind of revenue.
In the year end 2019 the 365 group made £86 million in charitable donations and the Denise Coates foundation donated £10 million to Staffordshire NHS to support staff and patients during the first wave of COVID in April last year.
£3 million was donated to Newcastle Under Lyme school for the construction of a new sports facility with other recipients being Keele University and Douglas Macmillan hospice.
So contributions are made but take away the punter and they will decrease massively.

Jimstewart said:

One last word on the tax issue. It’s emerged over the last few days that the owners of bet 365 the Coates family have paid tax of £573 million pounds in the last year. The Done brothers (betfred) have paid £191 million.
I admit to be a bit torn over this because on the one hand it’s an obscene amount of profit made and 365 in particular are marketing experts and have made hay. On the other hand their tax contributions alone pay for 62,000 state pensions. They have no high st outlets and will have their turnover massively hit if the proposed limits come to fruition. That is just one example of tax contributions. As said the Done brothers also pay a huge amount and then you have the countless other firms.
Look after the problem punters by all means but do it sensibly because this country is Donald ducked as it is and the treasury can ill afford to lose this kind of revenue.
In the year end 2019 the 365 group made £86 million in charitable donations and the Denise Coates foundation donated £10 million to Staffordshire NHS to support staff and patients during the first wave of COVID in April last year.
£3 million was donated to Newcastle Under Lyme school for the construction of a new sports facility with other recipients being Keele University and Douglas Macmillan hospice.
So contributions are made but take away the punter and they will decrease massively.

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That's ok then.

2 million plus ( and growing) problem gamblers (not including the problems faced by their families), less than 3% of whom get help plus a growing population of school kids who are addicted to gambling are a reasonable price to pay to allow gambling to continue unabated.

"Obscene profit" - your words and indeed it is more ways than one.

Jimstewart said:

One last word on the tax issue. It’s emerged over the last few days that the owners of bet 365 the Coates family have paid tax of £573 million pounds in the last year. The Done brothers (betfred) have paid £191 million.
I admit to be a bit torn over this because on the one hand it’s an obscene amount of profit made and 365 in particular are marketing experts and have made hay. On the other hand their tax contributions alone pay for 62,000 state pensions. They have no high st outlets and will have their turnover massively hit if the proposed limits come to fruition. That is just one example of tax contributions. As said the Done brothers also pay a huge amount and then you have the countless other firms.
Look after the problem punters by all means but do it sensibly because this country is Donald ducked as it is and the treasury can ill afford to lose this kind of revenue.
In the year end 2019 the 365 group made £86 million in charitable donations and the Denise Coates foundation donated £10 million to Staffordshire NHS to support staff and patients during the first wave of COVID in April last year.
£3 million was donated to Newcastle Under Lyme school for the construction of a new sports facility with other recipients being Keele University and Douglas Macmillan hospice.
So contributions are made but take away the punter and they will decrease massively.

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Maybe they’re just good people or maybe it’s a way to justify the deaths, divorces and depression they cause. How many bets need to be lost for them to have to pay that much in tax?

DCI_Gene_Hunt said:

That's ok then.

2 million plus ( and growing) problem gamblers (not including the problems faced by their families), less than 3% of whom get help plus a growing population of school kids who are addicted to gambling are a reasonable price to pay to allow gambling to continue unabated.

"Obscene profit" - your words and indeed it is more ways than one.

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Yes I did say I was torn . However if you said to me would I rather that nearly £1 billion was lost to the treasury from just two of the dozens of operators then I would say no.
Would I rather the many good causes be denied these vital contributions? No.
Would I rather the free will of millions that enjoy and sometimes even profit from a bet be denied them ? No.
Would I like to see problem gamblers helped by being able to self exclude? Yes.
Would I like them to have maximum deposit limits? Yes.
Would I like them to have access to gamcare, GA and be gamble aware through all betting outlets? Yes.
Would I like a ban on credit card betting? Yes.
Would I like controls brought in such as a maximum stake based on five percent of a balance to prevent loss chasing (the biggest trait in problem gambling)? Yes.
Would I like a maximum stake of £5 on balances of £100 or less? Yes.
Would I like to see increased contributions from the industry to charitable organisations of all kinds but particularly those that treat problem gamblers? Yes.
A lot of the above is in place bar the bottom three.

If all bar 3 of those controls are in place and we still have millions of problem gamblers not getting help, more people getting addicted, kids being targeted with advertising, the number of kids getting addicted then its clearly not enough not matter how much you dress it up with firms generating tax income from obscene profits.

Jim you really know your stuff. Many of the on line gamblers I know wouldnt notice if there was a jumbo jet flying in the room. The old farts have their bonces stuck to the Racing Post.

Interesting figures but the chicken feed in comparison to the tax gains from plonkies and tobacco.

Good luck to you s Sir.

SilentProf said:

Maybe they’re just good people or maybe it’s a way to justify the deaths, divorces and depression they cause. How many bets need to be lost for them to have to pay that much in

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SilentProf said:

Maybe they’re just good people or maybe it’s a way to justify the deaths, divorces and depression they cause. How many bets need to be lost for them to have to pay that much in tax?

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Maybe. I was talking to my local landlady the other day. Good person she is. She was on her way to make her daily charitable donations to ease her conscience about the 9,000 alcohol related deaths that occurred in the UK last year.

As for the number of bets that need to be lost gamblers lose a win or lose a percentage of turnover based on their ability to calculate probability. Bookmakers win a percentage of their turnover based on their margins (over round) on each event typically around 15 percent With the more participants the higher the margin. It’s not £1 from you and £1.20 to me as you said earlier but then I’ve said all this already. It’s volume of turnover not numbers of bets.

Epiphany Proudfoot said:

Jim you really know your stuff. Many of the on line gamblers I know wouldnt notice if there was a jumbo jet flying in the room. The old farts have their bonces stuck to the Racing Post.

Interesting figures but the chicken feed in comparison to the tax gains from plonkies and tobacco.

Good luck to you s Sir.

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Cheers. Agree on the sauce and fags.

Jimstewart said:

Maybe. I was talking to my local landlady the other day. Good person she is. She was on her way to make her daily charitable donations to ease her conscience about the 9,000 alcohol related deaths that occurred in the UK last year.

As for the number of bets that need to be lost gamblers lose a win or lose a percentage of turnover based on their ability to calculate probability. Bookmakers win a percentage of their turnover based on their margins (over round) on each event typically around 15 percent With the more participants the higher the margin. It’s not £1 from you and £1.20 to me as you said earlier but then I’ve said all this already. It’s volume of turnover not numbers of bets.

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Maybe

Jimstewart said:

Maybe. I was talking to my local landlady the other day. Good person she is. She was on her way to make her daily charitable donations to ease her conscience about the 9,000 alcohol related deaths that occurred in the UK last year.

As for the number of bets that need to be lost gamblers lose a win or lose a percentage of turnover based on their ability to calculate probability. Bookmakers win a percentage of their turnover based on their margins (over round) on each event typically around 15 percent With the more participants the higher the margin. It’s not £1 from you and £1.20 to me as you said earlier but then I’ve said all this already. It’s volume of turnover not numbers of bets.

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I suspect your judgement is clouded on this issue, no surprise when you are making enough money from gambling to not get a proper job and not pay any tax.
The best bit is you want the rest of us who actually do some work for a living and pay our taxes to feel sorry for you.
As for the real numbers on problem gamblers ask the bookies to publish how many accounts have deposit limits or used time out or self exclusion, that will tell you all you need to know, it will be a lot more than 280k put it that way.

big_Ol said:

Maybe

I suspect your judgement is clouded on this issue, no surprise when you are making enough money from gambling to not get a proper job and not pay any tax.
The best bit is you want the rest of us who actually do some work for a living and pay our taxes to feel sorry for you.
As for the real numbers on problem gamblers ask the bookies to publish how many accounts have deposit limits or used time out or self exclusion, that will tell you all you need to know, it will be a lot more than 280k put it that way.

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Ok where to start. I was I’ve been employed in the industry and left in 2004 as I had a career change but kept involved on the other side of the counter.

Due to the effect of the pandemic I lost my job in July of last year and decided to do some matched betting and exploit certain loopholes in certain each way markets to supplement my income with the small pay off I had (I’d hadn’t been with my last employer to receive any significant redundancy).

I would love a proper job and to be back in the workplace. What I’m doing now is a means to an ends to provide an income for my family. I’m trying to earn ten percent on a small turnover and believe you me it’s not easy.

Now please point out where I’ve asked for your sympathy or anyone else’s. I have done proper work as you describe it virtually uninterrupted for 34 years and I wouldn’t have your sympathy given.

Jimstewart said:

Ok where to start. I was I’ve been employed in the industry and left in 2004 as I had a career change but kept involved on the other side of the counter.

Due to the effect of the pandemic I lost my job in July of last year and decided to do some matched betting and exploit certain loopholes in certain each way markets to supplement my income with the small pay off I had (I’d hadn’t been with my last employer to receive any significant redundancy).

I would love a proper job and to be back in the workplace. What I’m doing now is a means to an ends to provide an income for my family. I’m trying to earn ten percent on a small turnover and believe you me it’s not easy.

Now please point out where I’ve asked for your sympathy or anyone else’s. I have done proper work as you describe it virtually uninterrupted for 34 years and I wouldn’t have your sympathy given.

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At the end of the day you are defending an industry that makes its profits from other people’s misery. The gambling commission found that in one firm alone 83% of its profits were from 2% of its customers, I wonder what that 2% had in common? Your rationale for this being ok is that more people benefit from the gambling industry than are having their lives destroyed by it so that’s all that matters. Gambling addicts don’t just destroy their own life’s they have families and employers that also suffer. The cost on society is much higher than any monetary value.
I sincerely hope you manage to keep control of your matched betting because I know for a fact that no gambling addict set out to be a gambling addict so it could literally happy to anyone. I do sympathise with the situation you found yourself in, you seem a decent bloke and as you say just trying to make a few quid for your family but you clearly have no clue or don’t just don’t care about the damage to the people who can’t control their gambling and the way betting industry actively seeks them out.
All people are asking for is tighter regulations and to stop normalising football with betting. The fact the last gambling act was 2005 before the rise in online gambling says it all.

big_Ol said:

At the end of the day you are defending an industry that makes its profits from other people’s misery. The gambling commission found that in one firm alone 83% of its profits were from 2% of its customers, I wonder what that 2% had in common? Your rationale for this being ok is that more people benefit from the gambling industry than are having their lives destroyed by it so that’s all that matters. Gambling addicts don’t just destroy their own life’s they have families and employers that also suffer. The cost on society is much higher than any monetary value.
I sincerely hope you manage to keep control of your matched betting because I know for a fact that no gambling addict set out to be a gambling addict so it could literally happy to anyone. I do sympathise with the situation you found yourself in, you seem a decent bloke and as you say just trying to make a few quid for your family but you clearly have no clue or don’t just don’t care about the damage to the people who can’t control their gambling and the way betting industry actively seeks them out.
All people are asking for is tighter regulations and to stop normalising football with betting. The fact the last gambling act was 2005 before the rise in online gambling says it all.

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If you read about the Pareto pricinciple you will find that most businesses make the majority of their profits from a tiny percent of their clients. It was ever thus and bookmaking is no different.

Onto what the two percent had in common. They are VIP accounts. They take rich mugs to Royal Ascot and the motor racing. They wine and dine them and send people to their table to take their bets and may even lay them 13/8 when it’s 6/4 on the boards. These people put millions through the books and if they back every favourite they know they will hit a 33 percent strike rate and lose around ten percent long term. These clients don’t care they are buckled anyway.

Onto the vulnerable punter. He’s got around 800 a month coming in on benefits . He gets his money and he’s down to the bookies or online and the first fav of the day is 6/4. He has £20 on to get 50 back and it gets chinned on the line. He looks for the next fav and it’s 2/1 can’t get beat (despite the fact that 2/1 is 33 percent chance of winning) and he wants his 20 back plus the 30 he wanted to win in the first place so he has another £25 on. You know what happens it gets beat . He’s now 45 quid in the hole but he still wants his original 30 on top of the 45 he’s lost. He’s on the chase and this is what leads to disaster.

I’ve said three times above that stakes should be limited to five percent of a available balance so that the scenario above can’t happen. People in low incomes can’t deposit large amounts and a percentage of balance limit would take away the possibility of them doing it all in.

As for having no clue about the damage addiction can do I’ve also said three times that I’ve lost two people extremely close to me to alcoholism. I still frequent pubs in the sure and certain knowledge that the majority can handle it despite the inability of my family member and friend.

big_Ol said:

At the end of the day you are defending an industry that makes its profits from other people’s misery. The gambling commission found that in one firm alone 83% of its profits were from 2% of its customers, I wonder what that 2% had in common? Your rationale for this being ok is that more people benefit from the gambling industry than are having their lives destroyed by it so that’s all that matters. Gambling addicts don’t just destroy their own life’s they have families and employers that also suffer. The cost on society is much higher than any monetary value.
I sincerely hope you manage to keep control of your matched betting because I know for a fact that no gambling addict set out to be a gambling addict so it could literally happy to anyone. I do sympathise with the situation you found yourself in, you seem a decent bloke and as you say just trying to make a few quid for your family but you clearly have no clue or don’t just don’t care about the damage to the people who can’t control their gambling and the way betting industry actively seeks them out.
All people are asking for is tighter regulations and to stop normalising football with betting. The fact the last gambling act was 2005 before the rise in online gambling says it all.

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Sorry I missed one of your points . Your concern that I may not be able to control my betting as despite not seeking to turn into an addict I may become one.

I have balances across accounts and if betting (not matched) in the traditional way I don’t expose myself to more than two percent of that balance and only pay myself 0.5 percent of my balances on each account as a daily “wage”. We are not talking telephone numbers here.

Not everyone is a high rolling mug and not everyone is an addict. Most of us are in between either doing it for enjoyment or doing it for a reason.

Jimstewart said:

Maybe. I was talking to my local landlady the other day. Good person she is. She was on her way to make her daily charitable donations to ease her conscience about the 9,000 alcohol related deaths that occurred in the UK last year.

As for the number of bets that need to be lost gamblers lose a win or lose a percentage of turnover based on their ability to calculate probability. Bookmakers win a percentage of their turnover based on their margins (over round) on each event typically around 15 percent With the more participants the higher the margin. It’s not £1 from you and £1.20 to me as you said earlier but then I’ve said all this already. It’s volume of turnover not numbers of bets.

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I understand they don’t take directly from Peter to pay Paul, but that’s where all of the winnings, profits, operating costs and sponsorships come from at the end of the day so what’s the difference?

I’m not suggesting gambling is banned completely but they need to be more responsible and they’re not going to be without stricter regulations.

It’s been mentioned that there are over a million problem gamblers in the country, which you seem to think isn’t that many, but I think that’s wrong. There may be 33 million accounts but they don’t belong to 33 million people. A lot of them will have been used for one off bets like the grand national or for a new customer sign up offer. Many won’t be used again and therefore skew the data to suggest there are more regular gamblers than there actually are. Many more will be used by people like you playing the markets with multiple accounts. The problem gamblers I know all use multiple accounts through the year too.

The real statistic should be how many individuals own accounts and place bets on a weekly or even monthly basis. I have no idea what this is, but I dare say the 1 million problem gamblers make up a good percentage of them.

Jimstewart said:

If you read about the Pareto pricinciple you will find that most businesses make the majority of their profits from a tiny percent of their clients. It was ever thus and bookmaking is no different.

Onto what the two percent had in common. They are VIP accounts. They take rich mugs to Royal Ascot and the motor racing. They wine and dine them and send people to their table to take their bets and may even lay them 13/8 when it’s 6/4 on the boards. These people put millions through the books and if they back every favourite they know they will hit a 33 percent strike rate and lose around ten percent long term. These clients don’t care they are buckled anyway.

Onto the vulnerable punter. He’s got around 800 a month coming in on benefits . He gets his money and he’s down to the bookies or online and the first fav of the day is 6/4. He has £20 on to get 50 back and it gets chinned on the line. He looks for the next fav and it’s 2/1 can’t get beat (despite the fact that 2/1 is 33 percent chance of winning) and he wants his 20 back plus the 30 he wanted to win in the first place so he has another £25 on. You know what happens it gets beat . He’s now 45 quid in the hole but he still wants his original 30 on top of the 45 he’s lost. He’s on the chase and this is what leads to disaster.

I’ve said three times above that stakes should be limited to five percent of a available balance so that the scenario above can’t happen. People in low incomes can’t deposit large amounts and a percentage of balance limit would take away the possibility of them doing it all in.

As for having no clue about the damage addiction can do I’ve also said three times that I’ve lost two people extremely close to me to alcoholism. I still frequent pubs in the sure and certain knowledge that the majority can handle it despite the inability of my family member and friend.

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Everything you have written on this reply is naive at best or just plain ignorant at worst. Please do some proper research into VIP schemes and who you consider to be vulnerable gamblers. You don’t have to look too hard just google it and then come back to me and tell me if you think it’s still “rich mugs” targeted by VIP schemes.

As for the Pareto Principle it can be applied to most service related business but is certainly not applied to “most business” in terms of profit and even if you could argue that then that’s 20% which is not tiny at all, 2% is tiny. One thing I agree with you on the Pareto principle is gambling companies seek out the most profitable customers to maximise profit, in your world these are millionaires but in reality they are the problem gamblers.

big_Ol said:

At the end of the day you are defending an industry that makes its profits from other people’s misery. The gambling commission found that in one firm alone 83% of its profits were from 2% of its customers, I wonder what that 2% had in common? Your rationale for this being ok is that more people benefit from the gambling industry than are having their lives destroyed by it so that’s all that matters. Gambling addicts don’t just destroy their own life’s they have families and employers that also suffer. The cost on society is much higher than any monetary value.
I sincerely hope you manage to keep control of your matched betting because I know for a fact that no gambling addict set out to be a gambling addict so it could literally happy to anyone. I do sympathise with the situation you found yourself in, you seem a decent bloke and as you say just trying to make a few quid for your family but you clearly have no clue or don’t just don’t care about the damage to the people who can’t control their gambling and the way betting industry actively seeks them out.
All people are asking for is tighter regulations and to stop normalising football with betting. The fact the last gambling act was 2005 before the rise in online gambling says it all.

Click to expand...

big_Ol said:

Everything you have written on this reply is naive at best or just plain ignorant at worst. Please do some proper research into VIP schemes and who you consider to be vulnerable gamblers. You don’t have to look too hard just google it and then come back to me and tell me if you think it’s still “rich mugs” targeted by VIP schemes.

As for the Pareto Principle it can be applied to most service related business but is certainly not applied to “most business” in terms of profit and even if you could argue that then that’s 20% which is not tiny at all, 2% is tiny. One thing I agree with you on the Pareto principle is gambling companies seek out the most profitable customers to maximise profit, in your world these are millionaires but in reality they are the problem gamblers.

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Ok last post from me then I’m definitely off coz I’ve got things to do and a life to live.
In the late 80s to 2004 I was employed in the industry. When working in various shops every one of them had the same thing in common and that was the turnover of the shop was dominated by a small percentage of the punters. These punters would be given nicknames and their stakes would dwarf the rest of the blokes that used the shops. Nearly all their bets had to be green lighted by head office and in many cases they were given half at the price and half SP. They also had another thing in common the majority had an average of one to three bets a day and would then vanish.
Then you had the rest of the punters. Typically they would spend their lunch hours having around twenty bets on anything from dogs at crayford to racing at happy valley. They were spending nearly all of their disposable income in these places but nobody gave them a nickname, nobody rang their bets into head office and frankly at that time nobody cared because in the grand scheme of things and in comparison to the few high staking punters they were turning over peanuts.
So you have two types of punter. One of the many that come in and stake small amounts that add up to the tune of about a hundred quid and you have the very few that stake thousands on very few bets.

So given that bookmakers make a profit on turnover and not number of bets which ones do you think they will roll out the red carpet to?
The many frenzied punters with his dole or his meagre wage losing around 50 quid for every hundred staked or the high stakes punter losing around a grand for every ten grand staked. They want big punter because they thrive on turnover and let the over round work it’s magic. They want the big punter that drives off in his flash car that thinks he’s a winner but doesn’t actually know because he never keeps records. They want the big punter because they know he has the funds to keep coming back and doesn’t have to wait till pay day or the next time he signs on. And they want the big punter because without them the all important turnover goes through the floor and the whole thing becomes a waste of time due to the expenses.
If you ran a business and one client that had a ten thousand quid turnover on five transactions at a margin of ten percent in your favour and another one that had a turnover of 500 on 100 transactions at a margin of thirty percent in your favour which one would you put the kettle on for? It’s the former because despite the lack of margin and transactions his turnover is massive in comparison and therefore the profit is there.
Moving on to today I was talking to a shop manageress prior to shutdown about the proposed checks and she told me that they are already triggered now by stake levels. The advent of loyalty cards ( they are really there to keep tabs on your betting patterns as they don’t like winners) also trigger problem gamblers. There are self exclusion leaflets all over every shop and Chris Kamara mush is everywhere telling us when the fun stops stop.
I’ve already outlined how to stop the biggest trait of problem gamblers (chasing losses) online and that is by introducing maximum stakes to 1/20th of available balance and a maximum of £5 on balances under £100.
I would introduce a maximum stake of £2 on casino games and slots as they are simply impossible to win on.
Those two measures would at a stroke put pay to a lot of issues.
One last thing to anyone that does like a bet. Do it from a fund that is set aside from all other cash that you may need. Only ever bet a small percentage of it and preferably the same amount every time. Be selective and find a niche the best of which is the bad each way races for the bookies which are non handicaps with 8-11 runners and a short fav. They don’t like you betting the second fav each way in these as the maths are against them (under round) on the place side. Finally the minute it feels like a problem it is a problem stop and seek advice.
Over and out.

F.A.O Jim

A mate of mine gave up his job and became a professional poker player on line. Nice work if you are good enough and he was. About 200 US dollars a day if he had a few wins.

Another would bet large amounts on Premier League score draws but wouldnt touch the horses, no chance.

Both profited from the system but really knew what they were doing.