CEO of Racing NSW, Peter V’landys on Wagering Legislation
Below is an interview with Peter V’landys, CEO of Racing New South Wales (Australia). He talks about legislating interstate wagering operations, and the effect they have had on the industry.
I particularly like when V’landys is asked about why interstate legislation was brought about, he says:
“It changed with technology, unfortunately with internet and phone betting.”
Unfortunately!
That’s a pretty typical attitude; if new technology comes along which changes the game - the response is to legislate your way out of it - rather than deal with the actual issues. Why are people betting with out-of-state operations? Is it lower takeout, ease of use, better service; ahh well it doesn’t matter if we can’t compete, lets just force them to pay us more money.
In NSW there is an archaic law that means you can’t bet on races after certain hours, so of course people are going to look to other betting avenues. As somebody who’s no stranger to late night internet poker, I would guess that if the poker rooms came out and said that nobody could play after 10pm, there revenues would immediately drop 30-50%.
He also says:
“I’ll be concentrating on the revenue of the NSW racing industry and why racing legislation is so important to maintain that revenue.”
If an industry (any industry) needs to focus so heavily on legislation to maintain the status quo, I think there’s an underlying problem there. Of course wagering operations need to give back to the industry, but it just looks like the Australian authorities are looking at this issue upside down. Safe is risky. What do you think?
