UK Jockey Club Criticized Over ‘Short-Sighted’ Playtech Online Gaming Deal
The UK Jockey Club’s decision to partner with online casino software system colossus Playtech has been slammed by some inward the racing manufacture as “short-sighted,” The Racing Post reports.
Under the terms of the agreement, Playtech testament give rise a lay out of cognitive content sculptural after races and racecourses owned by the venerable 270-year-old institution. The deal, for an undisclosed sum, spans casino, unrecorded casino, poker, virtual sports, and bingo.
Formerly the Equus caballus racing regulator inwards Great Britain, the Jockey Club is now the industry’s biggest commercial organization. It owns 15 of the UK’s historic racetracks, including Aintree, Cheltenham, and Epsom Downs.
Horse Betting Difference
But critics say the Playtech partnership undermines the statement that betting on horses should be treated otherwise from other forms of gambling, the likes of gambling casino gaming, inwards upcoming governing reforms.
The industry is eager to emphasize the “skill-based” element of betting horses inward the hope that such wagers testament live free from tightened regulatory controls. It has highlighted higher job play rates among online casino customers than horse bettors.
The government activity has pledged to rectify the liberalizing 2005 UK Gambling Act, which spawned I of the to the highest degree permissive regulated online play markets in the world.
One proposal is to bring out “affordability checks” for customers who lose to a greater extent than £100 ($132) o'er a full stop of several weeks. This would regard customers having to ply operators with entropy virtually their income and monthly outgoings to continue to play.
The racing industry has said this could be the already cash-strapped boast £60 one thousand thousand (US$79 million) a twelvemonth in revenue from betting companies. That’s because recreational gamblers would follow dissuaded from betting past the intrusive checks.
‘Poor Timing’
The Horseracing Bettors Forum (HBF) is a dead body created with the assistance of the Brits Horseracing Authority (BHA) to correspond the interests of those who bet on British people horse racing. In a statement this week, it implied the Jockey Club was sleeping with the enemy.
With the Gambling Act reexamine white-hot paper stock-still to follow published, this annunciation seems poorly timed,” said HBF. “High street bookmakers hold re-invented themselves as online casinos, and experience knowingly conflated horseracing betting and games of chance.
In response to criticism, the Jockey Club explained the Playtech sell is near reaching new audiences and creating young revenue streams for the sport. It is not nigh how play is regulated, it said.