William Hill shuts 109 shops

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector...9-betting-shops.html

Daily Telegraph

sad times....

Betting machine tax 25%? You'll need to teach me. Does this mean that if I back a horse via the betting machine that either I or the bookie will pay 25% tax?

No mac, the bookies pay 25% tax on their profits from the machines ( fruit machines, roulette)

Off the GGR in SA

We pay 15 % tax, 6.84% CEMS, R70 per machine rental, and insurance @ around R33 per machine
The balance after the above weekly deductions is split
R/O 60 % and S/O ( us ) 40 %

Pirhobeta Wrote:

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> sad times....


Not sad at all
There are way to many on the high streets,they are all competing for Roulette punters..
Some areas have 10-15 shops in a mile radius.
They should have taxed them more.
Greedy,greedy bookmakers

Fixed odds betting terminals, a kind of big-money fruit machine, are driving the profits in betting shops. Some councils are now fighting back.

Alongside the open fronted butcher's shops and brightly coloured silk houses, the bookmakers lining High Street North don't draw the eye by comparison.

Inside, the laminate floors and faint whiff of disinfectant underwhelm the senses, and no-one appears to be having much fun. The Las Vegas strip this is not.

Local councillors say the street in Newham, east London, has more bookmakers than any other in the country - 18 in total - and 80 in the borough as a whole.

In most of them, attention isn't focused on the horse or greyhound racing which streams as usual on to a row of televisions. Instead, gamblers crowd around four dark grey machines where they pick from a handful of fixed-odds games.

Continue reading the main story
Betting shops in the UK

8,700 compared with 16,000 30 years ago
84% on High Streets and commercial centres
Employ 40,000 people
Eight million customers
3% of population are regular visitors, says Mintel
Before 2008 outlets couldn't open near each other and new shops had to "prove unmet demand"
Government wanted more competition so removed these rules
This coincided with the downturn - and subsequent empty retail space on High Streets
Source: Association of British Bookmakers

"Rainbow Riches", "Dragon's Flame" and "Star Wars: A New Hope" look like replicas of pub fruit machines, but Video Roulette looks to be the biggest draw.

Punters sit mesmerised on bar stools tapping bets on to the digitised green felt before watching the ball loop around the wheel and land with a synthetic clunk.

"It's the speed of the games that's so alarming," says Councillor Ian Corbett, who repeats the familiar charge: "It's the crack cocaine of gambling".

He says the machines average profits of around £50,000 each a year - £200,000 per shop. Market research firm Mintel says their revenue surpassed traditional over the counter betting for the first time in 2011/12.

Unlike traditional amusement arcades - which are in the minority in Newham - there are no neon bulbs, no sounds to signal a jackpot, and no rush of falling coins. These would slow people down, says Corbett. Once banknotes have been fed into the machine, everything takes place on the screen. Winners cash out by printing paper slips and trading them in with the shop attendant.

Newham council has just lost a legal battle to prevent a new Paddy Power opening in nearby Green Street. There too, the road is already peppered with gambling shops - three branches of Ladbrokes sit within a few metres of each other just outside the station.

Bookmakers are limited to four fixed-odds machines per shop. With machines bringing in on average £900 a week in profits, critics say some bookmakers seem to be avoiding the restriction by opening more branches, creating High Street clusters.

But the bookmakers point out that the actual number of betting shops nationwide has remained fairly static for a decade and is half what it was in the 1970s. Ladbrokes say shop relocations to the High Street are simply responding to demand.

the machines have ruined the shops, turned the bookies into amusement arcades and stopped the bookies from laying bets.Their managers are under orders to chase the risky punters with offering them bad service,and to point the mad gamblers towards the machines.

all under the pretence of responsible gambling

Hard to sympathize with bookmakers.

hibernia Wrote:

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> the machines have ruined the shops, turned the
> bookies into amusement arcades and stopped the
> bookies from laying bets.Their managers are under
> orders to chase the risky punters with offering
> them bad service,and to point the mad gamblers
> towards the machines.
>
> all under the pretence of responsible gambling

Spot on.

davetheflower Wrote:

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> Pirhobeta Wrote:
>

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>

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> > sad times....
>
>
> Not sad at all
> There are way to many on the high streets,they are
> all competing for Roulette punters..
> Some areas have 10-15 shops in a mile radius.
> They should have taxed them more.
> Greedy,greedy bookmakers

(tu) yep, well said. i mean, they all do not have the balls to let winners win. is there any other competition in teh world, where u get banned if you are better than the other player! they should close all bookies

if I am in Peebles then I will just go into William Hill to watch a race or two. I don't bet in the bookies and there is only one machine in that store and I have only seen one person playing the machine. They offer you a cup of coffee and a biscuit when you go anywhere near the counter. Its a very nice a sociable shop. Just over the road they have opened a Ladbrokes about 6 months or so ago. Also very clean and they have a huge screen that runs across the wall with all sorts of info on it.