'An open goal for illegal bookmakers' - integrity expert sounds affordability checks warning

A senior Hong Kong Jockey Club executive with expert knowledge of illegal betting has told a global audience of racing leaders that affordability checks are providing a priceless open goal to black market bookmakers.

Tom Chignell, the HKJC's executive manager of racing integrity and betting analysis, was speaking in Melbourne at an Asian Racing Conference session that examined the relentless growth of unregulated operators and their increasing hunger to attract racing punters.

After Chignell's HKJC colleague Doug Robinson warned that illegal betting – often linked to wider crime and money laundering – represented "the number-one threat to the integrity of racing", Chignell made a direct connection to the intrusive bookmaker-imposed checks that are forcing punters away from the regulated market and eating into the finances of British racing.

Chignell, a member of the Asian Racing Federation Council on Anti-Illegal Betting and Related Financial Crime, said: "I think it's an absolutely massive issue in the UK at the moment. Affordability checks are not just pushing recreational gamblers away from regulated operators but pushing them almost directly to the illegal betting market. 

"Can you get a bet on? Can you get fair odds? Can you bet on the sport and product you want to bet on? If you can't, these are three major incentives to push the customers racing wants to attract – the Saturday gamblers  to the illegal betting market."

Punters and bookmakers are awaiting publication of the UK government's gambling white paperCredit: Steve Nash

Amid repeated delays to the publication of the UK government's white paper on gambling reform, hundreds of punters have contacted the Racing Post to complain after being asked to hand over a raft of personal financial information to bookmakers who have repeatedly lowered the bar at which checks are instigated for fear of being fined by the Gambling Commission.

The regulator has sought to play down the extent to which frustrated punters are shifting to the black market, yet Racecourse Media Group on Sunday revealed a survey of 3,500 Racing TV members found 15 per cent of respondents either bet or know someone who bets with an unlicensed firm.

Chignell added: "The concern is that while Britain has had a diverse regulated market, and although people have sometimes struggled to get bets on with bookmakers because they have been successful and therefore had to spread money across the regulated market, you now have reports of people in betting shops being asked for financial information like three months of bank statements. People don't want to do that, which means this is a real opportunity for the illegal market to target those individuals. 

"When the last Asian Racing Conference took place in South Africa three years ago, there were a few smaller operators who had started offering fixed odds on horseracing. That number is growing and we are now seeing more significant Asian-facing companies doing it. Those companies are being given an open goal to make inroads into what was a regulated market."

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