Or When Is An In-Play Bet Not An In-Play Bet?

As it stands in Australia, bookmakers cannot legally allow you to place a bet on a sporting event that has already started. Unless you own a telephone. Or you walk into a TAB. Or it’s a horse race.

So that’s consistent then.

This strange state of affairs stems from the rather curious piece of legislation that regulates the Australian online gambling industry: the Interactive Gambling Act 2001. 

This is the act that stops the corporate bookies from offering online casino games, but allows them to take bets on the AFL.

You can read it for yourself if you like. It’s all online. If you find reading legal documents boring, why not make it more interesting by trying to guess which vested interests influenced which bits? (hint: if in doubt, probably Tabcorp)

The first thing you’ll notice is the odd way it goes about defining the rules. It starts by stating that offering “interactive gambling services” to customers in Australia is prohibited, but then sets out a series of exemptions — these “excluded services” are not considered “interactive gambling services” and are therefore not covered by the act:

(3)  For the purposes of this Act, none of the following services is an interactive gambling service :
     (a)  a telephone betting service;
     (aa)  an excluded wagering service (see section 8A);
     (ab)  an excluded gaming service (see section 8B);

The definition of an “excluded wagering service” is in section 8a: horseracing, harness racing, greyhound racing and sporting events are all excluded and the act does not apply to them. 

Oh, except that “betting on the outcome of a sporting event, where the bets are placed, made, received or accepted after the beginning of the event” does not count as an excluded wagering service. So here is our first inconsistency: excluded wagering services consist of three types of racing plus “sporting events”, but for sporting events (only) you cannot bet after the event starts. There are all sorts of reasons why you might want to prevent in-play betting, but why on earth do those reasons not also apply to racing?

The telephone betting service bit is even more bizarre. For that we turn to the definitions:

“standard telephone service” has the same meaning as in the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999.

“telephone betting service” means a gambling service provided on the basis that dealings with customers are wholly by way of voice calls made using a standard telephone service.

“voice call” means:
    (a)  a voice call within the ordinary meaning of that expression; or
    (b)  a call that involves a recorded or synthetic voice; or
    (c)  if a call covered by paragraph (a) or (b) is not practical for a particular customer with a disability (for example, because the customer has a hearing impairment)–a call that is equivalent to a call covered by either of those paragraphs;

whether or not the customer responds by way of pressing buttons on a telephone handset or similar thing.

If you’ve been wondering how William Hill, Bet 365 and co have got away with offering “click-to-call” services for in-play betting in their apps for so long, then this is why. These services initiate a VoIP call when users click a button on the smartphone app. An automated synthetic voice responds, the user presses another button on their “telephone handset or similar thing” to confirm and the bet is placed.

Earlier this year the government announced the results of a review into Illegal Offshore Gaming. In a press conference in Melbourne the Social Services Minister Alan Tudge stated:

Our position is very clear, it is in black and white in the statement which we are putting out today that we don’t intend to further expand the product offerings to the in-play environment. Further to that though, we are going to close that loophole which presently some gambling providers are exploiting. And we think that they are certainly going against the intent of what the IGA says today, if not the actual law.

On the basis of this statement, a number of media reports stated that the federal government in late April strengthened a ban on online in-play betting on sports, which is kind of hilarious if you think about it. When did we replace the two houses that pass legislation in Australia with things being law because ministers announce them in press conferences. That’s not how democracy works. If they really want to ban click-to-call they will either have to enact new legislation or test the existing act in court. Neither has happened yet.

Tudge even tacitly admits that click-to-call doesn’t breach the “actual law”, just the “intent” of the law. Which is interesting. What was the intent of the law? To protect an existing phone betting service offered by the TAB at the time the act was written? How are we supposed to know the intent if it’s not written into, you know, the “actual law”?

If the intent was to prevent people from betting in-play then why allow phone betting at all? Why allow betting through a phone call involving a synthetic voice? And why allow betting on racing after the jump?

While the iPhone was still a twinkle in Steve Jobs’ eye back in 2001, and the authors couldn’t have been expected to forsee a future where we would all be carrying round small computers in our pockets, what ultimately is the difference between pressing buttons on a traditional phone to place a bet and pressing buttons on a smartphone keypad? Is it just that one of them takes fractionally longer?

And no one ever talks about the “cash out” services that most bookies offer (this being a service where you can cash out a bet at some point before the event finishes at the current price, locking in either a smaller loss or a smaller profit than letting the bet ride). How is this different to trading out of a position on Betfair? (Apart from the fact that the cash out offer is typically very poor value for the consumer and very good value for the bookie). 

You’ll hear various justifications for not being able to bet in-play on sporting events. The main two that are trotted out are integrity concerns and worries about problem gambling. Neither of those quite stacks up for me though: if you’re worried about integrity surely you want to be bringing all those in-play bets into the regulated onshore environment where you can keep an eye on them (seriously, if you’re into fixing football matches but you can’t work out how to place a bet with an overseas bookie then you’re probably not a very good match fixer). And if we’re talking about problem gambling maybe we want to fix Australia’s massive pokie addiction first…

All in all, the current situation just seems bizarelly inconsistent and makes no sense whatsoever. Clearly the government is in no mood to fix the inconsistencies, but on the flipside I can’t see them passing any new legislation any time soon either. 

Tips: BACK click-to-call to stick around for a while yet. LAY “new gambling legislation passed in this parliament”.