Chairman's Blog: All bets are off unless Commission pulls back

There is an old proverb that sums up well the British government and Gambling Commission’s approach to problem betting: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. 

Campaigners, especially from groups that disapprove of gambling altogether, have long argued that the public – especially those that bet on horseracing – must be saved from themselves. They advocate  affordability checks to ensure that vulnerable people are not frittering away the household budget every week. 

Of course, they dress up the intrusion into our lives with appeals to mental health, safeguarding children and the perfectly reasonable argument that, in some cases, gambling is an addiction. The problem is that, like most government initiatives, they live in a fantasy world where people all obey the laws and are too dimwitted to find ways round regulations and especially intrusive affordability checks. The  complexity of the  current income and corporate  tax codes shows just how stupid  that assumption is.

Moreover, they are out of touch with the modern world. For the last 36 years I have worked as an economist, advising fund managers about investing in Asia. Almost all my clients are institutional equity market investors, but in Asia they are often dwarfed by domestic retail investors. Many have investments in Vietnam, one of the fastest growing economies in Asia. 

But here’s the thing: there are more registered crypto-currency account holders in Vietnam than there are retail equity accounts. In 2025 there were 18 million registered crypto accounts, representing around one fifth of the population. Nearly all of them are owned by people under 30. 

When racing professionals – and I mean regulators and the betting industry – warn about the rise of the black market (or its more ‘inclusive’ name, illegal gambling), many are inclined to dismiss their  arguments as self-interested or scaremongering. They are neither. These warnings address precisely what the do-gooders supposedly want, a reduction in potentially unaffordable addictions and, perhaps more importantly, crime.

Yet, according to well-placed sources, the Gambling Commission refuses to listen to such arguments. It was charged with introducing ‘frictionless’ risk assessments and that is what it intends to do, come hell or high water. At a meeting to be held after this column was written, it is due to lay out more detail about what it wants, when it wants it, and how the checks will be introduced. All the evidence to date suggests it will be a dog’s breakfast of well-meaning but ultimately self-defeating conceit i.e. that it knows best. 

As one well-argued letter to the Racing Post set out on May 14: “Unregulated gambling is nothing new and, before 1960, Britain had a Wild West-style betting industry in the form of illicit backstreet wagering on racing.” I remember my father telling me about the characters in our village and nearby town in the 1940s and 50s that were ‘bookies’ runners’. They would be present at a designated spot each day and collect the ‘lines’  and money from the local inveterate gamblers. It was a system based on trust and generally performed without a hitch.

Today’s bookies’ runners are mobile phones, websites and Bitcoin (or another crypto). Often you don’t even need the last one but for absolute anonymity, it is a preferred medium. 

Does the Gambling Commission really believe that punters are less informed about the universe of media that is available to place a bet now than was the case in the 1950s? 

The Vietnam example is a case in point and remember, it is a communist country with a more intrusive government than we have (just). 

Then there are the arguments about the damage that will be wreaked in the betting and racing industries as legal gambling shrinks. If you think this is an empty threat, please wake up. In fully-regulated Hong Kong – the Jockey Club owns the only legal betting medium – the turnover on horseracing has been falling for the last few years. In 2025, betting turnover also fell on football. The Chinese have not suddenly become betting prudes – they are shifting to creative, crypto alternatives. 

The debate over which gamblers legal bookmakers wish to retain and which they want to discourage (i.e. those who win regularly) is a side issue for now. The big problem confronting racing is a government and Gambling Commission divorced from reality. Checks that drive punters into the arms of illegal bookmakers and websites benefit no-one, least of all problem gamblers. For once, the politicians need to listen, or they will be culpable for much more family suffering than exists at present.