ArticlesBetFair is in the news today as it has made some deal with the Tasmanian goverment and PBL.
Now, there are, without doubt, various ethical issues with gambling. There are, without doubt, issues of corruption that need careful consideration.
However, one issue that gets raised, again and again, about BetFair is the notion that, because you can bet against a horse winning, it instantly leads to corruption and that it is “un-Australian” [Ref: an official from a jockey club interviewed on Lateline tonight]
Aside: When someone suggests that something is un-Australian, it means that they don’t have a real argument to advance their cause, and also that they don’t have any notion of history. For the record, there is nothing un-Australian about corruption, murder, racism, or oppression, just to name a few acts. There is something very un-Australian about accusing other people of being un-Australian.
Betting Against = Lots of Betting For
Currently, you can’t directly bet against a particular horse on the various TABs.
I’ll give you a simple lesson in gambling. It is really easy to indirectly bet against a horse. You simple bet for every other horse in the race.
BetFair doesn’t introduce a new option here – they just simplify it.
Conclusion
You can decide for yourself whether gambling is evil.
You can decide for yourself whether BetFair will divert gambling dollars to Tasmania at the expense of the other state governments.
You can decide for yourself whether the biggest risk of corruption is due to deals amongst trainers and jockeys to lose a horse race, or due to deals amongst gambling organisations, media moguls and cash-poor state governments.
But when you do decide, please ignore the nonsense about un-Australian acts and the ability in BetFair to (Shock! Horror!) bet against a horse.
Comment by Alan Green on November 22, 2005
Nit-picking: Betting on every other horse is quite not the same as betting against one horse, in the Betfair sense.
F’r instance, let’s assume there are ten horses in a race. You are betting against one horse, so you place $1 on the 9 others to win. In order for you to make your money back, the winning horse must have odds of at least 8:1.
Comment by Julian on November 22, 2005
Alan, You are right. You need to bet an amount on each horse in inverse-proportion to the horse’s odds in order to balance it out. That makes it hard to bet “$1 worth”, but the kind of corruption that is being suggested here would require bets substantially higher than $1 to make it worthwhile.