This morning I read the following statement from the so called Australian Wagering Council (which is solely made up of Bristish Bookmakers) which really made me angry.
You can read the entire thing here, but I’ll paste the gist of it.
Time to crack the whip on illegal offshore operators
The Australian Wagering Council has warned more Australians face losing their money and risks to the security of their personal and financial information, unless governments commit to a crackdown on the operations of illegal offshore wagering service providers.
The proliferation of illegal offshore operators again highlights the need for government reform of the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 (Cth), which no longer reflects the current state of technology or advances in global harm
minimization measures.It is estimated in excess of $1Billion is bet offshore by Australians annually and a 2014 report on interactive gambling, funded by Gambling Research Australia, found that at least one-third of interactive gamblers were not concerned about gambling with offshore providers.
“If you enjoy a bet on racing and sport make sure you do it with an Australian licensed, highly regulated wagering service provider”, Mr Downy concluded.
What a load of utter f&cken bulls#t. While betting with some offshore bookmakers is risky, they will at least take a bet from customers. It is infact the bookmakers that form the AWC that have forced punters hands and the only way they can now bet is to go offshore.
- Do we want to send our money overseas? Off course not
- Do we like having to risk never being paid? Umm No
- If we could place our bets in Australia would we? HELL YES
Lets take a look at an example from today
I wanted to place $500 on South Sydney to win tonight’s big NRL finals game against Manly. The prices on the Australian bookies varied between 1.4 and 1.45. I could get better offshore, but lets say i really wanted to support local australian business (cough, hack, wheeze).
I went to Sportsbet first
Off to Tom Waterhouse (sportingbet and Centrebet)
What about Ladbrokes group (Ladbrokes, Bookmaker and Betstar)
Maybe off to Unibet then
They let me bet $200.
In total I could get $389 to win $163 across all Australian Wagering Council Bookmakers. My only choice is to bet offshore.
This happens every single day on every single bet most people try and place. This NRL game is a huge game and yet they limit or ban me completely. The Australian Wagering Council is dead right when it said “the need for government reform of the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 (Cth), which no longer reflects the current state of technology”. The government needs to act immediately to stop these bookmakers from making Australian punters risk their money overseas. They need to make sure everyone is given a fair go and can bet whatever they like on all sports and that these corporate bookmakers pay a fair tax on their profits. These UK giants made a big mistake when they thought they could treat the Australian public the same way they treated the UK public for years.
Now sadly I am off to send money I really don’t want to overseas bookies. All thanks to the members of the Australian Wagering Council.