Islj 2009 3-4 - TMC Asser Instituut

Sports Betting: Law and Policy. A
UK Perspective
by Genevieve Gordon*
Gambling and Sport
Gambling or betting and sport have almost been inseparable and
gambling has been subject to considerable regulation by the State.
Gambling has close links with the general commercialisation of sport
and with corrupt practices in sport which can be illustrated by such
affairs as the Hansie Cronje Affair, 2020 cricket issues surrounding
Alan Stamford and other cases such as Bradley 1 in horse racing. With
two very distinct issues in discussion in this paper we will be looking
at the laws governing the gambling and betting in the UK combined
with a number of social policy issues detailing measures to regulate
betting for the benefit of society. The National Lottery will not be
expanded on other than to say an independent study, British Survey
of Children, the National Lottery and Gambling 2008-09, is the only
British underage research of its kind and was commissioned by the
National Lottery Commission to test the effectiveness of Camelot’s
child protection measures. The survey of nearly 9,000 children aged
between 12 and 15 in England and Wales was conducted by Ipsos
MORI and the Centre for the Study of Gambling at the University of
Salford. 2
A Brief History of Sports Betting in the UK
Gambling has always been a part of the modern sporting world,
although the public response to it has varied from one period to
another. Gambling was endemic in the 18th Century Britain, but
before 1850 a puritanical reaction had begun, aimed at working class
betting. The greatest achievement of the anti-gambling lobby was
probably the Street Betting Act 1906, but it remained a powerful and
influential opponent certainly up until the second Royal Commission
on the subject in 1949. Since then gambling on sport has been increasingly
raided by governments to provide income for the State and has
also played a crucial role in the financing of the major sports of football
and horse racing. 3
Betting had always been part of rural sports, both those involving
animals and those involving contests between men. Pedestrianism 4
probably began in the 17th Century.
Betting on horses was also commonplace, often taking the form of
individual challenges between members of the landed gentry. Betting
added another dimension of excitement to the uncertainty of sport
itself and it was excitement, which the leisured rural classes were especially
seeking, particularly in a countryside whose range of more conventional
pursuits soon began to pall in the eyes of the young, married,
leisured males.
Cricket was another rural pastime that the landed bucks found
* Sports Management Department,
Birkbeck College, London, United
Kingdom. Paper presented at the Ninth
Asser Annual International Sports Law
Lecture concerning “Sports betting policy
in a European legal perspective: freedom
of services versus general interest”,
The Hague, The Netherlands, 16
September 2009.
1 Bradley v The Jockey Club (2004)
EWHC 2164.
2 According to Dr Anne Wright CBE,
Chair of the National Lottery
Commission there is a continuing
decline in underage play which shows an
effective regulatory framework together
with a socially responsible operator making
it very difficult for children to access
National Lottery products.
3 Gardiner, S., James, M., O’Leary, J. and
Welch, R., Sports Law (2005), 3rd Ed,
Cavendish Publishing
4 Aristocrats bet on their footmen and
promoted the races.
5 A Littlewoods bookmaker would collect
your pools each week going from door
to door.
6 The average price of a 3 bedroom
detached house in East Sussex with 2
acres of land in 1976.
7 It is somewhat unclear whether under
the regulations whether they can gamble
on matches they are not competing - this
however would have ethical and insider
dealing considerations.
attractive. With money at stake it was important to reduce the
chances of disagreement by drawing up a body of rules and regulations
by which both sides would abide.
Football was a very attractive proposition both to the bookmakers
and punters, before 1900 some newspapers had offered prizes for forecasting
the correct scores as well as the results of a small number of
matches and early in the 20th century a system of betting on football
coupons at fixed odds had developed in the north of England.
Newspapers began publishing their own pool coupons (until the
Courts declared the practice illegal in 1928) and individual bookmakers
offered a variety of betting opportunities. By the end of the 1920’s,
the football pools, and particularly Littlewoods 5 under the entrepreneurial
guidance of the Moores brothers, had begun to thrive. The
pool for one week in 1929-30 reached £19,000. 6 By the mid-1930’s the
firm was sponsoring programmes on Radio Luxembourg which
broadcast the results of matches on Saturdays and Sundays. In 1934
those companies founding the Pools Promoters’ Association had a
turnover of about £8 million which had increased by 1938 to £22 million
of which the promoters retained a little over 20%.
By the mid-19th century betting and sport were firmly established.
Gambling was typical of a corrupt aristocracy and it was simply up to
them if they chose to lose ‘everything’ gambling. When the poor were
led to emulate them however it was widely agreed that something had
to be done. By 1850 the State was being pressurised into doing it.
Betting by the poor led to debt which in turn led to crime. As The
Times put it in the 1890’s, it ‘eats the heart out of honest labour. It
produces an impression that life is governed by chance and not by
laws’.
The anti-gamblers’ first legislative success was an Act of 1853 to suppress
betting houses and betting shops, which had been springing up
in places, often within public houses. A House of Lords Select
Committee first examined the matter in 1901-02. In 1906 came the
legislation.
The Street Betting Act of 1906 has gained some notoriety as an
example of class biased legislation. It was aimed at all off-course betting.
A person who could afford an account with a bookmaker who
knew his financial circumstances well enough to allow him to bet on
credit did not have a problem. Obviously this ruled out many of the
working class men and women.
By 1929 the police were very critical of both the law and their role
in enforcing it and said as much to the Royal Commission which at
the time was examining the police services. The Second World War
and the relatively buoyant economy succeeded it to bring about a
more relaxed attitude to gambling. This was also facilitated by the
Royal Commission of 1949-51 having relatively sophisticated economic
and statistical apparatus which enabled it to show that personal
expenditure on gambling was only about 1% of total personal expenditure,
that gambling was then absorbing only about 0.5% of the total
resources of the country and that it was by then rare for it to be a
cause of poverty in individual households.
The Royal Commission was in favour of the provisions of legal
facilities for betting off the course and the licence betting shop reappeared
in 1960, 107 years after it had first been made illegal. Six years
later the government’s betting duty reappeared too.
Gambling’s relationship with sport has been significant in two
other respects: as a motive for malpractice and corruption and as a
source of finance for sporting activities. Today the Test and County
Cricket Board (TCCB) has a regulation forbidding players to gamble
on matches in which they take part. 7 Football has occasionally been
shaken by allegations that matches have been thrown, usually in the
PA P E R S
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