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Remember the days, way back when, when the only way you could
get on was to traverse the lino at the TAB on the corner,
through the smoky haze, to the fat lady behind a totalizer machine
and churn through a ticket? Or perhaps you preferred to call your
SP bookmaker with the silent number. You knew when you'd surpassed
your credit limit with that guy: he'd threaten to remove your
kneecaps with multigrips. If you were way over your limit, he'd
threaten to make YOU remove your kneecaps with multigrips.
Ah, the good old days. Where have you gone?
The decision by the Tasmanian Government to become the first state
to grant British-based betting agency Betfair a license does not
mark a new era in gambling. It's just another arm to a beast that
has been around longer than most footy codes or hobbies. What
it has done, this format of "betting exchanges", is
heighten the awareness of major sports and their desire to get
a larger chunk of the punting pie. Roy Masters revealed in the
Fairfax press yesterday that the major sports will lobby state
governments for a greater share of the gambling dollar. They also
want access to the betting activity of their athletes, in so doing
eradicate the scourge of match-fixing. Forget the Melbourne Cup.
The real race has begun, and it's worth far more than the Superfecta
you placed on Tuesday.
The move of the major codes is being made sans the AFL, which
last week signed a meaty deal with Betfair. Effectively, the AFL
has done what the other codes - cricket, rugby league, rugby union
and second-tier sports - are thinking, and have been for some
time: if bastards are betting on our sports, we want some action,
baby. The desire to catch out athletes cheating on themselves
is a smokescreen. Like, betting agencies are going to show the
betting habits of athletes, in many cases their best customers
by virtue of the fact they are well-paid love a punt. Tracking
their gambling addictions would be impossible anyway. "Honey,
can you put $1000 on St Kilda to win the flag? Thanks, darl. Kisses".
The respective state TAB agencies vehemently oppose Betfair, stating
it will open the way for match-fixing. There was one reported
case in England last year with a jockey. But will the floodgates
open? Nooooooo. Like, no sportsperson or coach or jockey or trainer
or owner or anyone in any position of power in sport has ever
abused their position before internet betting or this notion of
betting exchanges came along, right? Suuuuuure. Salim
Malik was approaching Tim May in the mid-90s, well before one
percent of the world knew what a modem was. NFL players were fudging
on games in the 1970s. They tried to run Phar Lap over in the
days before the Melbourne Cup in 1930. Just today, this column
heard a yarn about the former best umpire in the world ruling
against giving the most plumb leg before wicket decision in the
history of cricket when an Australian player was in the nineties.
Just after the player reached his ton, the bowler appealed, ball
swinging down the legside...OUT! Afterwards, the Australian captain
asked the world's leading umpire why he didn't give his player
out. The umpire smiled - and then shamelessly produced a betting
stub showing a stackload on the player to make his century.
Wherever there is money there is a percentage of corruption. Greed
isn't one of the deadly sins for nothing.
Kerry Packer knows the score. He bought 50 per cent of the Betfair
license last year because he knows where the next buck is coming
from - and on-line gambling is where it's at. Before you know
it, that remote in front of you will be wired to your television
and your credit card and you'll be betting on how many times Ricky
Ponting scratches his arse at the non-striker's end. Packer is
so keen on this concept that you can bet on this: he'll be selling
his beloved Channel Nine to bankroll it in the near future. And
when has The Whale been wrong?
You sense that the major codes are starting to realise this. They
want to get their share of the truckloads being invested on their
sports. Probably fair enough, too. The dilemma for sport as we
know it is this: what does it want to be? Does it want to become
an industry driven by the punt? Does it want to become wallpaper
to the masses for the purpose of revenue? Does it want to, as
a whole, become what horseracing has long been? Does it want to
wait for that rare moment - like the one witnessed on Tuesday
- when the means for gambling reminds everyone that it is, actually,
a sport?
It shall be interesting to see where sport places its bets for
the future.
Click your way to our Comebacks
page and tell us what you think.
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