Thinking Twice

Bookmakers are good for the game, and keep many punters in horseracing that would otherwise take their gambling money elsewhere.
If I think a horse is a 4/1 shot, I can back it at those odds with a bookmaker, knowing what my return will be. I can pick my bookmaker – if he bets to diabolical percentages, I can pass and go elsewhere.
With the tote it’s a different story. Firstly the service is diafuckenbolical, but I must support them? The horse is paying 7.00 on the monitor, but by the time the race is run its something completely different. Add to that the celebrity who plays funny buggers with the win and place pool, and to me it’s a big NO NO

The "no bookmakers" argument is based on the dangerous and fallacious assumption that regular patrons of bookmakers would all transfer to betting with the Tote should bookies disappear. This may have held water up to 20 or so years ago, when there were simply no alternative forms of gambling to horse racing in SA, but that time has passed.

Any move to convert SA to a Tote monopoly should realistically have occurred no later than sometime in the 1970s. That particular horse has bolted. Hence, this is a dead argument, in my opinion, and my view has nothing whatsoever to do with my association with Hollywood.

The are generally 'bucket shops' wherever bookmakers are banned.

Maybe someone should ask the bookmaker on USO on saturday as to why bookmakers are so opposed to Betfair and yet so many of them deal illegally with the Pakistani bookmakers.Nothing quite like double standards to catch peoples attention.

The fact that something would carry on happening even if it is declared unlawful is no kind of an argument. On that basis we may as well legalise murder, robbery and speeding on the highway because they continue to happen even while illegal.

However, this was not my point. My point is that many punters enjoy not only the concept of betting at fixed odds, but betting in the sort of upmarket, enjoyable environment that many bookies' shops (not least Hollywood) provide. Take that away and the trek to the casinos, rather than the TAB outlets, could be a killer blow to racing. We just could not afford to take the risk. In a dream world I would be all in favour of a Tote monopoly, but here in the real world I fear that the days when such a thing could even have been considered in SA are long gone.

Whether some bookmakers apply double standards is not really the issue here. No doubt they do. Having one's bread buttered on both sides is irresistible to some people. Personally, I have nothing against open trading on Betfair.

I agree with Magic.

You can say that most people who use bookmakers also use the tote,
while many people who play the tote do not use bookmakers.

The totalisator is really just a machine that steals money from millions of small players with an enormous takeout and zero liability. The tote facilitates people who keep on playing and have no sense of value, they don't even know what the payout will be against what it should be.

The only real way to beat the tote is to have much more money than the majority of tote players and try to scoop using massive perms or striking obvious lines many times. DD payed R1.40 a place in the Met, and the SWG PP+DD also paid R1.40 (granted there were many more uninformed punters than usual and probably most of those thousands could see or understand the monitors).

If the average win bet on the tote is R100 (pure guess), than anything in the order of 20x more will change the payout and so the tote can never accomodate a player that is a magnitude bigger than the average, UNLESS it assumes some liability.

NOTHING stops the race operators from offering fixed odds!

The tote monopoly is an idea that has come and gone, like only men can vote. That boat has sailed.

Re: Co-migling - bigger pools = bigger dividends..!!! (?)
Posted by: scotia ()
Date: April 22, 2008 09:33AM

This is one of my pet hates, and can find plenty more on this subject, but dont be conned!!

CO-MINGLING?


Note! This was an extract from an early Scotia in the morning posts with regards to the co-mingling French fiasco????????????????????????????????????




I also posted on the site with regards the 2 horse race, makes its so much easier to check what pressure the normal "punter" is up against, I posted PLEASE don't make them both "money-on", however blackpearl at 7/10 and 11/10 tried to come to the party, Interbet at racetime came to the party in-line with Betfair with 8/10 and 12/10 at 100%, but the early prices from the bookies at 6/10 and 9/10 shocking, but the shocker was the TOTE with 7/10 the winner and "NOT TOTE FAV", this must surely expose to the poor punter in the tote how much the "rip off" factor is. I will say this one more time as it totally infuriates me that the French co-mingling fiasco when Dettori won on the 6/1 shot and it paid 11/10 on the tote and "WAS NOT THE TOTE FAV", just wish more people could read these posts on the site, and after my inputs on Saturday, many people do read the site, but don't post.

Matthew,

Please explain why " In a dream world I would be all in favour of a Tote monopoly"

No-one has mentioned that higher stakes makes for cleaner or more honest racing. This is because owners/jockeys/trainers will race only for stakes and will not have to subsidize their income with gambling revenue. The more honest and open racing is perceived to be the more people will be willing to bet on it and the more the stakes increase etc etc.

"In a dream world I would be all in favour of a Tote monopoly, but here in the real world I fear that the days when such a thing could even have been considered in SA are long gone."

This so-called "dream world" is an actuality in many of the world's leading racing venues. It is not fantasy, it is reality.

Nagboy makes a brilliant point.

And there are many other brilliant points.

Bookmaking as a concept is not a bad one. But it can only work if they pay their fair share into an account that will bolster prize money.

One of racing's biggest hurdles to overcome worldwide is "insider trading."

Racing and punting only work if those who bet on the outcome of these sporting events feel the table is not tilted toward those that put on the show, i. e., the horsemen and owners.

Being able to take advantage of their inside knowledge rubs punters the wrong way and rightly so.

A so-called "tote monopoly" would go a long ways toward offering a remedy to this situation.

In order for the sport to prosper, it has to become attractive for owners to want to play and invest at a high level.

One's initial investment in a horse can only be recouped if the value of bloodstock rises. It can only rise if prize money rises.

As a bare minimum, owners should have a reasonable opportunity to recoup their annual expenses.

Here comes next a statement that is not meant to make me look smart, but in 21 of 22 racing seasons and in all of my South African racing years,my stable has always been profitable in terms of earning enough prize money to cover expenses.

But being able to recoup the investment is another matter entirely. This can only be achieved if bloostock value are high. High prize money makes them more valuable, because more people are enticed to play the game.

Bookies and racing association owners cannot count on races being filled by good-hearted sportsmen and women. Even the most wealthy do not indulge their passions if there is no financial reward at the end of the rainbow.

French online betting monopoly crumbles


UK-BASED online betting companies are expected to lead the charge when licenses to operate sportsbook and poker businesses in France from January 1, 2010 become available this summer.



Confirmation that France's state betting monopolies through Francais des Jeux and Pari-Mutuel Urbain are about to be broken came on Thursday, when budget minister Eric Woerth revealed a tax structure for online betting of two per cent on poker and 7.5 per cent on horseracing and general sports.



John O’Reilly, head of e-gaming for Ladbrokes, said: “The licensing arrangements have still to be set out in detail, but providing the economics are satisfactory, we will definitely look very closely at what is being offered and evaluate the opportunities.”



He added: “Ladbrokes and the French PMU were at war for many years, but we settled our differences in the mid-1990s, and we have not targeted France, or introduced a French language service, with our online offer.



“However, the situation seems to be changing, and maybe this will prove to be the thin end of a very big wedge.”



Minister Woerth explained that a proposed gaming bill would be presented in the next fewweeks. It is likely to be voted on in parliament and the senate before the summer recess, for implementation on January 1, 2010.



Licenses are expected to be awarded to operators for a five year-period.



Betting other than through the internet will not be changed, and the PMU’s monopoly on pool betting on horseracing will remain. Fixed-odds betting will be allowed on other sports such as football and tennis.



Pressure on France’s restrictive policy has come from pressure from the European Commission, whose officials from competition commission Charlie McCreevy's office first met French government representatives to discuss opening the gambling market.

Barry

1. Am I correct when I say there was a period in HK racing where the ratings of horses that could be bought and imported was capped to ensure that the price war for horses would not escalate?

2. While there is a tote monopoly in most of US racing, that several tracks have filed for bankruptcy?

Justanotherpunter Wrote:

---

> Matthew,
>
> Please explain why " In a dream world I would be
> all in favour of a Tote monopoly"


The idea that money bet on the Tote finds its way back into racing, whereas bookmakers' profits are exactly that and can be spent on anything outside of racing. This to a great extent must explain why stakes in France (a Tote monopoly) are much higher at the bread-and-butter level than they are in bookmaker-saturated Britain, a country of roughly similar population size and disposable income.

The Tote may have no liability and doesn't care if a heavily backed favourite or a rank outsider wins, but either way it returns a certain percentage of its take to racing, in the form of stakes, facilities, etc. In this sense, if every cent that is wagered in SA was bet with the Tote alone then racing would be all the wealthier. However, in this day and age that would never happen. It is no longer a case of Tote vs. bookmaker, it's a case of racing vs. other gambling forms.