Back in 1999 times were about to drastically change for the Bookmaking industry, Betfair was about to emerge from a garage and Bet365 had acquired its first Portakabin.
These two companies would go on to take billions of pounds of liquidity from the betting markets.
Betfairs slogan was “winners welcome” later changed to winners welcome if you pay premium charge at 20% up to 60% and unlike income tax, no rebate if you have a bad year. There was another betting exchange that had started earlier flutter.co.uk that had a flat rate of 2.5p in the pound commission as opposed to betfairs 5% but betfair quickly snapped them up.
Bet365 unofficial slogan winners never welcome, borrowed £15 million from RBS against the family's betting shop estate to start its online site.
The company sold its betting shop chain in 2005 for £40 million to Coral and paid off its loan to RBS. Bet365 has more than 35 million customers staking around £65 billion a year.
1999 was also the year that the fobt (fixed odds betting terminal) gaming machine, roulette etc., were beginning to roll off the production line and be the saviour of the high street bookmakers.
Fob maximum stake.
Turn on the clock to April 2019 more drastic change the reduction in maximum bet on the fobts from £100 to £2 and as of April 2020 The Gambling Commission have banned betting online using a credit card. I quote from their website “Research undertaken by the Commission shows that 22%** of online gamblers using credit cards to gamble are classed as problem gamblers – with even more at some risk of harm.
The ban, which will apply to all online and offline gambling products with the exception of non-remote lotteries, will provide a significant layer of additional protection to vulnerable people”.
Wouldn’t have thought it needed a crystal ball or research for that matter to arrive at that conclusion, the fact that it was allowed to happen in the first place is a disgrace in what we are told a is strictly regulated sector, imagine how much misery its caused to families of gamblers.
“The 2016 Health Survey, which is the most robust data we have, shows that there are around 340,000 problem gamblers in Great Britain".
VIP schemes could be banned
The Gambling Commission gathered data from betting firms and found that the industry relies heavily on VIP schemes; with one firm they reviewed taking 83% of its deposits from 2% of its players. The 2% of players was the site’s only VIP customers.
One of its rivals took 58% of its betting account deposits from a VIP cohort that made up 5% of its customer base, while a third accepted 48% of deposits from 3% of customers.
The data suggests that if the regulator bans VIP schemes, the decision could deal a huge blow to the industry’s revenues.
The commission estimates there are 47,000 VIPs in Britain, it could be argued that all their customers are VIPs with losing accounts that can continue to use their site while those with winning accounts are or will be banned which is the norm these days.
More regulation will probably result in bookmakers moving more of their operation abroad Malta, Gibraltar etc.
With more states in the US legalizing online gambling, west could well be the destination the bookmakers choose.