Account closures and restrictions are angering racing punters but there is an answer

Racing enjoyed its biggest win for many years in last month’s budget. The threatened harmonisation of duty rates for betting and gaming was not simply seen off, but routed, with the differential between the two rates significantly increased. As an added bonus, meanwhile, racing was excluded from the small rise in the duty rate for bets on football and other sporting events.

Having celebrated the win, though, the next step is to ensure that the benefits are maximised. And since, in relative terms, racing has just become a more attractive product for bookmakers, what better moment could there be to address one of the major obstacles that many punters face when they want to bet on the horses?

That barrier is account closures and restrictions on punters who are – or appear to be – sufficiently smart to make a long-term profit on their betting. A punter tries to take an advertised price, sometimes for as little as £10 or £20, but the computer says no and offers a derisory alternative stake of a few pennies instead.

Everyone in racing knows that it has been happening for many years. It makes a mockery of the Gambling Commission’s mission statement to ensure that gambling is “safe, open and fair”. And yet many of the sport’s keenest fans and form students are being told that their money is not wanted – in the regulated market at least – on a daily basis.

This is all despite the fact that a potential remedy – a minimum bet rule (MBR) – has been operating in most Australian jurisdictions for a decade or more. In Victoria, for instance, the home of the Melbourne Cup, off-course operators are obliged to lay an advertised price on “metropolitan” (ie. major) races to lose at least $2000 (£995) on a win bet, while the minimum for non-metropolitan – or “bush” racing – is $1000.

Ladbrokes and William Hill are among the well-known betting brands that operate successfully in Australia with an MBR in place. Yet the bookies have always resisted the introduction of a similar rule in the UK, claiming that it will impact on the bonuses and offers available to punters, such as “Best Odds Guaranteed” when a punter takes a price and the eventual SP is bigger.

If that claim sounds strangely familiar, though, it might well be because a similar argument was put forward as a reason why duty rates in general – and the rate for gaming products like online slots in particular – should not be raised in the budget. It was, according to Michael Dugher, the BGC’s chair, “just naïve” for racing to think it would escape unscathed from a major hike in online gaming duty, or that the black market would not benefit from a subsequent increase in margins in the regulated sector.

As other voices including the former prime minister, Gordon Brown, pointed out, however, the multi-national gambling corporations are willing to pay 50% or more in duty on their gaming profits in some US jurisdictions. And despite all the dire warnings, not to mention the BGC’s schmoozing of Rachel Reeves and Labour MPs at conference, the chancellor effectively doubled online gaming duty, from 21% to 40%.

The wheels, it seems, have come off the gambling industry’s once well-oiled lobbying machine. Predictions of impending doom no longer carry much weight, not least when there are case studies elsewhere to prove them wrong, so this is surely the moment for the Gambling Commission to grasp the nettle on restrictions.

This does not mean that the black market is not an issue, but it is in everyone’s interests – the treasury included – to keep gambling turnover in the regulated sector. The budget also included £26m for the Gambling Commission over the next three years to tackle the threat from the unregulated sector, and in any case, nothing has done more to push punters towards unregulated firms over the past 20 years than punters being told that their business isn’t welcome.

The MBR model is there in Australia for all to see, and the Gambling Commission should need no reminding about the ongoing unfairness of bookmakers refusing to take a bet. It is already long overdue, but the MBR’s right moment, perhaps, has finally arrived.