Bookmaker License

Just noticed the headline on the Gambling Commission website,

Gambling Commission. Keeping gambling FAIR and safe for ALL.   

You just couldn't make it up !

Good luck with your contact with the Gambling Commission. Please post your reply on here.

They are so quick to restrict you if you have a winning run and also ban you from there promotions,but they are all like parasites feeding off the vulnerable who keep feeding the FOBT,what is an absolute joke is the token effort that bookmakers show to responsible gambling and then go squealing to some of there cronies in Government because they are thinking about reducing the maximum of £100 a go down to £10 on the FOBT's

There are 2 parties to every wager and they have to be in agreement. That's fair enough, but what
gets me is that the bookies are allowed to turn down tiny bets at an advertised price and continue
to advertise it. In any retail trade that would be illegal under false advertising rules.

@Pete

No it wouldn't.  Advertising a price is an invitation to tender, no more; no-one is obliged to do business with anyone they don't want to (bar anti-discrimination legislation).  So I can sell T-shirts for a pound on my market stall, and when you come to buy a dozen I can politely tell you I don't want to trade with you.

No-one expects any other business to keep customers on their books if their business with that customer is consistently loss-making; why do people persist in imagining bookies should be a special case?

longbridge ... invitation to tender is to do with buying goods from a shop, not a bet. However you are right (not for the invitation to treat reason) that a bookmaker can lay me a 500/400 but lay you zilch if he/she chooses.
I agree with you 100%, why do people think bookmakers would do business with people they wouldn't want to ?

All of you, STOP MOANING !


We Limit Some Gamblers To Benefit Others, Say Bookmakers


Paddy Power said that it restricted some customers to manage financial risk


Aaron Rogan The Times online (Ireland) 7/9/2015




Ireland’s biggest bookmakers have defended their practice of limiting the amount some customers can bet.

Paddy Power, **** and Ladbrokes routinely restrict winning customers, an investigation by The Times has found. Industry insiders said that the process was not transparent enough.

Paddy Power said that it managed financial risk and worked to prevent bets that were against its terms and conditions.

“We take a ‘one for all’ rather than an ‘all for one’ view so, for instance, if we’re prepared to lose €2 million on an event, we would much prefer to lose €2,000 to a thousand different customers rather than €2 million to one individual,” it said.

**** denied restricting winning customers and said that it would not comment on evidence that a customer was restricted to 14c when he tried to place a bet on a horse that its traders had priced at 11/8.

A spokesman for the company said: “Disclosing a precise reason for a restriction would lead some customers to continue to engage in abusive behaviour by circumventing the precise way the original behaviour was detected.

“It has been our strategy to be very price competitive and, as a result, it would not make sense for us to shy away from customers who are betting on price.”

Ladbrokes Ireland, which recently exited examinership after receiving €12.8 million investment from its UK parent company, would not comment on a customer’s claim that his bet was cancelled in a Dublin city centre shop when a trader in the company’s head office complained to shop staff that he had been allowed to bet €50 on a 14/1 horse.

A spokeswoman for Ladbrokes Ireland said: “The vast majority of our customers are able to bet their requested stake at the available odds. Our priority is protecting value for the overwhelming majority of our customer base, who are recreational punters, over a small number of highly and solely price-sensitive clients who, as a proportion of our entire customer base, remain very small,” a spokeswoman for Ladbrokes Ireland said.

None of the three companies would say what percentage of customers were restricted from betting.

@lumponlarge - I know it's about buying goods from a shop.  I was replying to Pete's assertion that "In any retail trade that would be illegal under false advertising rules".

I know about invitation to tender, but advertising rules are different, I think.

I know a bloke who got in trouble with advertising standards because he said that
stuff was reduced on his website, when it hadn't been at the higher price for three
full months.

Anyway, I take your point.

I think it's NSW where they passed legislation enforcing all bookmakers to take a minimum bet from all punters. i seem to remember the minimum varied based on the size of the event, but it was somewhere between 200 and 1000 dollars.

which seems fair.

i always thought betfair (when it was just the exchange) could have run a great set of promotional video diaries featuring successful punters getting closed down on every bookmakers' website.

Gambling is clearly not run in a 'fair' manner if only losing customers are offered the advertised price.

I do not understand why people bet with these firms now its known only losers can place a bet with them. If someone in the pub says I just bet £200 on this horse online with anyone apart from Betfair you know they are one of the following:

1. A complete loser.
2. A liar.
3. They have just opened their account.

The nature of the beast (bookmaking) is winning money and paying money out, that's bookmaking in a nutshell, unlike any other business (although I can not think of any over trades)  that has a right not to deal with a loss making customer - bookmaking has to be different and unique. There is that risk that someone may win regularly and if they cant accept that then they should not be granted a license to trade, it really is a no brainer.

1. A complete loser.
2. A liar.
3. They have just opened their account.
4. An aftertimer
5. Two or more of the above

We live in a regulated society with laws to protect us from ourselves.....Classic example is banks and the heavy obligation on them to ensure that their loan applicant customers can really afford the loan. Failure to do so thereby allowing the customer to borrow money it cant afford to borrow despite the borrower squealing to borrow it puts the bank at risk of reprisal from its regulators.

Bookmaking industry also have heavy obligations to ensure that gamblers can afford to lose what they put at risk.

Which is why regular losers will be asked for their financial particulars so the bookmaker is satisfied the punter can afford to lose .....

Of course few (very few) will want to hand over this information and

leaves the bookmaker little option but to limit that gamblers bets.

Ironically if your bets are restricted it will be for your own protection....as your rate of losses will be causing alarm bells .....with the sophisticated software/algorithms used to detect this behaviour.....

^ Barney Curley has just choked on his cornflakes ! ^

Bookmakers love losers and hate winners
why else are they all squealing to the government because the government want to tighten up the use of FOBT's in shops and bring in legislation to limit the maximum on a spin down from £100 to £10 for these thieving machines.