UK GAMBLING COMMISSION MAY REIN IN NOVELTY BETTING

1 June 2007

Potential for cheating could be considerable say sporting bodies

Recent novelty betting partnerships between Will Hill and Paddypower, and more recently Betfair and Virgin Games could find themselves restricted by the UK Gambling Commission following its announcement last week that it is to consider introducing tough restrictions on the type of bets that bookmakers are allowed to offer.

Virgin has teamed up with Betfair (see previous InfoPowa report) to give its customers the ability to place bets on the entertainment, football, cricket, golf, greyhounds, motor sport, rugby and tennis sectors - generically called novelty betting.

“Virgin Games is all about fun and entertainment, so novelty betting is a good fit for the brand," Virgin Games CEO Simon Burridge explained. "Although entertainment betting is seen as a sideline by most of the traditional bookies, we believe it is a market with huge potential. Every year, millions of people spend millions of pounds phoning and texting votes into reality TV shows.”

But football, rugby and cricket administrators apparently fear that a new generation of cheats could take advantage of unusual sports bets that are not dependent on the outcome of a game, according to a report in The Times newspaper this week.

Consequently, the Gambling Commission has announced that it is to consider introducing tough restrictions on the type of bets that bookmakers are allowed to offer.

In a consultation paper released last week, the watchdog asked whether it “...should require the gambling industry to offer only certain categories of betting opportunities”.

The proposal is being resisted by the betting world, which claims that there is no evidence of widespread cheating. It is one of a number of ideas being considered by the commission to boost the integrity of sports betting. These include the creation of an official results service for sport similar to the one that currently exists in horseracing. At present bookmakers decide for themselves how they wish to settle bets.

The suggestions come after pressure from the sporting industry, which fears that the expansion of sports betting, driven by the arrival of betting exchanges such as Betfair, is the biggest challenge to the industry. The representative bodies of five sports – football, cricket, tennis, rugby league and rugby union – have employed a lobbying firm to try to tackle the issue.

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