Will the Bonus King support flutter free February?
Campaign for Fairer Gambling
The Campaign for Fairer Gambling suggests that the profits of high street betting shop companies come at the expense of problem gambler addiction to fixed odds betting terminals.
Bookie, money lender, property developer and truck stop café owner, Fred Done, finally scraped back into the black this month, announcing a £32 million pre-tax profit from his 1,600 plus betting shops. Despite losing his long time sidekick and CEO from the company, Fred has miraculously turned the loss making “Bonus King” bookie into a real small player among the new corporate monoliths of Ladbroke Coral and William Hill, having also grabbed their cast offs’.
Even after buying the state owned bookmaker, the Tote, which in 2011 was making approximately £20 million a year in profits, the “Bonus King’s” shops just aren’t that much of a bonus for him anymore! So, he’s brought in Rothschild Bank to “review strategic options for his company - including a sale or floating it”.
With Scotland joining England and Wales in tightening up planning laws against betting shops, an impending “clampdown” by the Government on FOBTs and a myriad of “nasty Fred” stories such as sacking people at Christmas and scurrilous bonus schemes for his staff, Fred took pen to paper in a last ditch plea for mercy.
As he added another £10 million to his £1.3 billion family fortune, he poured his heart out in an open letter – “a reduction in gaming machine stakes to £2 would make 660 shops loss-making overnight, resulting in me having to make a decision to close them".
Yet, just as Fred put the finishing touches to his letter pleading to keep £100 stakes, he and Ladbroke Coral pulled the plug on live racing pictures to their betting shops leaving their customers standing in front of blank TV screens while torch wielding William Hill staff shone light into the shops to wake them from their daze.
Maybe their reluctance to cough up for live pictures is in anticipation of a “Flutter Free February”. This initiative being led by the independently funded, Living Room Cardiff, suggests that taking a month off from gambling, as with alcohol, could help all gamblers and their families. Compare this to the campaigns organised and managed by the bookmaker funded, Senet Group, who in their latest campaign urged gamblers to “Gamble Smart”. It’s difficult to imagine Senet advising gamblers to take a month off.
Fred seems to think he can manage without racing and like Ladbroke Coral has also recognised that you don’t need live racing when you have got live football betting and the young, male dominated, “FOBT friendly” demographic it brings into the shops.
As Fred considers his bookmaking future, his “Human Resources arm”, in the guise of his brother Peter, which often reaches out to Philip Davies MP may well keep him busy entertaining other MPs. As the Independent revealed in 2013, and more recently the Guardian, there is always a flurry of free trips to the races and wining and dining for MPs, when the threat of regulatory action looms. Not all MPs fall for this flattery but those that do, like the new double act of Dugher and Davies really lap it up. Maybe it’s time for some MPs to go ‘flutter free’ for a while too.
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