Phumelela wins sports betting case against bookies

The totalisator soccer and rugby betting offered by Phumelela and Kenilworth Racing is completely legal.

MAY 7, 2018
That was the verdict laid down on Monday 7 May 2018 in the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria, where Judge L M Molopa-Sethosa ruled that the totalisator sports betting fell within an exclusion in the Lotteries Act.

This permits Phumelela and Kenilworth Racing to conduct tote pools on sports outcomes in the same format and manner and under the same circumstances as that which regulated horseracing prior to 18 June 1997.

Judge Molopa-Sethosa’s ruling follows an application by the South African Bookmakers’ Association (formerly the KwaZulu-Natal Bookmakers’ Society) and the Gauteng Off-Course Bookmakers’ Association to have the totalisator soccer and rugby betting declared illegal.

The bookmakers contended that the totalisator sports betting offered by Phumelela and Kenilworth Racing constitutes sports pools in terms of the Lotteries Act and that only the national lottery operator could conduct such sports pools.

They sought an interdict restraining Phumelela and Kenilworth Racing from offering totalisator sports betting.
But Judge Molopa-Sethosa would have none of it.

“I am in respectful agreement with the interpretation preferred by the Phumelela respondents,” Judge Molopa-Sethosa ruled, adding that “on a conspectus of facts I cannot find any reason why the legislature would have intended to preserve totalisator betting on horseracing but not on other sports”.

Judge Molopa-Sethosa not only dismissed the bookmakers’ application, but ordered them to pay the costs of Phumelela and Kenilworth Racing, “such costs to include the costs consequent to the employment of 2 counsel in respect of the respondents”.

This is a landmark judgment. It will no doubt prompt other institutions to try and get their internal lotteries and charity pools with vehicles and other prizes legalised. The Act is very vague and needs the court to set the boundaries.

what does this mean for horseracing...

?

Don wrote: what does this mean for horseracing...

Surely means nothing more than diluted pools..... The bookies wanted that big slice of the football pools is all.

It should be good news for stakes since a portion of the takeout from the sports pools feeds the horse stakes pot

That will not happen, stakes increase??? What it will affect is the magnitude of bonuses come review time.

....rhetorical question.....forget the stakes.....its going to gravy.....and bigger steaks.... :whistle: