Skip to main content

The betting shops in city centres debate

Interesting discussion in today's Racing Post about 'plagues' of betting shops in city centres. Councils and residents are getting sick of them, the big bookies love them and can't get enough retail shops.

Why I hear you ask? Racing's share of the gambling pound is ever decreasing, more and more punters are betting online and you rarely see anyone in the betting shops that already exist... except standing around the FOBTs (Fixed Odds Betting Terminals) or glorified slot machines. And that's what brings in the profits for the bookies. Racing, football and any other sport they show in the shops are mere sideshow value to the evil machines.

Every licensed betting shop in the UK can have four FOBTs (little wonder Irish betting shops are struggling in comparison without them), which have much higher prize limits than pub fruit machines. Sources at the biggest High St firms have told me that they consistently make up to £1m per DAY across their network of outlets from these things. No wonder they want to own as many as they can. Local govt regulations were changed in 2005, previously there had to be cause shown for an additional betting shop to be opened. Now it's just open slather.

What city centre really wants to have its streets full of betting shops, pound shops and junk food outlets? Congratulations to Newmarket City Council for rejecting betting shop no.12 in their city centre, but it should never have been allowed to get that far.

An ideal system might be X per 1000 people within a council, with licences then sold off to the highest bidders and some retained for local independents. Do we really need to see three Ladbrokes/Will Hill/Paddy Power/BetFred shops within a one-mile radius? Not even the plague of Starbucks has gotten that bad...

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Comments

  1. Interesting post, my local town has 3 lads, 2 fred and 2 coral, I do all my betting online and only ever pop in from time to time if I am waiting for her indoors to finish shopping. Needless to say there are a few old boys sticking £2 e/w bets on, but other than that the games freaks are out in force. Weird when you can get bigger jackpots etc on line too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. If councils dont want betting, charity and fast food shops they should stop allowing Tesco's and the like wrecking town centres.

    ReplyDelete
  3. In my local high street there are 8 charity shops. There are 2 bookies. The problem isn't the number of bookies - it's the lack of alternative businesses to rent the shops to sell goods. If you want a "proper" high street with lots of different shops then stop using the major supermarkets to buy everything from milk to electical goods.
    Its your choice - use it!

    ReplyDelete
  4. yep, agree with those last couple of points to a degree. Councils should provide incentives to fill High St shops - some of the empty ones in my ares look like they've been vacant for decades!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks for your comments, but if you're a spammer, you've just wasted your time - it won't get posted.

Popular posts from this blog

It's all gone Pete Tong at Betfair!

The Christmas Hurdle from Leopardstown, a good Grade 2 race during the holiday period. But now it will go into history as the race which brought Betfair down. Over £21m at odds of 29 available on Voler La Vedette in-running - that's a potential liability of over £500m. You might think that's a bit suspicious, something's fishy, especially with the horse starting at a Betfair SP of 2.96. Well, this wasn't a horse being stopped by a jockey either - the bloody horse won! Look at what was matched at 29. Split that in half and multiply by 28 for the actual liability for the layer(s). (Matched amounts always shown as double the backers' stake, never counts the layers' risk). There's no way a Betfair client would have £600m+ in their account. Maybe £20 or even £50m from the massive syndicates who regard(ed) Betfair as safer than any bank, but not £600m. So the error has to be something technical. However, rumour has it, a helpdesk reply (not gospel, natur

Betdaq.... sold...... FOR HOW MUCH???

So as rumoured for a while, Ladbrokes have finally acquired the lemon, sorry, purple-coloured betting exchange, Betdaq. For a mind-boggling €30m as 'initial consideration'. That's an even more ridiculous price than Fernando Torres for £50m, or any English player Liverpool have purchased in recent seasons! As I've written previously there are no logical business reasons for this acquisition. from Nov 29, 2012 The Racing Post reported this week that Ladbrokes are nearing a decision to acquire Betdaq. This baffles me, it really does. Betdaq are a complete and utter lemon. Their only rival in the market has kicked so many own goals over the years with the premium charge, followed by an increase in the premium charge, cost of API and data use, customer service standards which have fallen faster than Facebook share value, site crashes and various other faults. So many pissed off Betfair customers, yet Betdaq are still tailed off with a lap to go. Around the world, Betfair

lay the field - my favourite racing strategy

Dabbling with laying the field in-running at various prices today, not just one price, but several in the same race. Got several matched in the previous race at Brighton, then this race came along at Nottingham. Such a long straight at Nottingham makes punters often over-react and think the finish line is closer than it actually is. As you can see by the number of bets matched, there was plenty of volatility in this in-play market. It's rare you'll get a complete wipe-out with one horse getting matched at all levels, but it can happen, so don't give yourself too much risk...