-on for victory
Campaign to limit stakes for bookies’ casino games at £2 INVENTOR HAS CASHED IN
FORMER bookie Steve Frater invented fixed odds betting terminals and used the proceeds to build up a £3.8million property empire.
He came up with the first FOBTs in 1998 with his Austrian business partner Walter Grubmuller – and built the first terminal in a kitchen. Less than a decade later they sold their firm to US giant Scientific Games for more than £100million.
Frater, now 65, continued to pocket a fortune as chairman of Global Draw Limited, a subsidiary of Scientific Games.
He netted more than £18million as chairman until he retired in March 2016. Frater now runs his investment portfolio from his £3million home in Essex. In 2013 he told how he and Grubmuller knew they were pushing gambling boundaries “to the limit” with the controversial FOBT.
He said arcade, casino and bingo groups claimed the system was illegal. But after he and Grubmuller signed a deal with Coral “everyone wanted them”, he added.
Londoner Frater worked for William Hill before he and his business pal set up as independent bookies in the mid 1990s.
They worked out of Grubmuller’s home, using his kitchen as an office, the dining room as a lab and his garage as the warehouse.
Within weeks their machines, also known as B2s, were appearing in betting shops around Britain. out of their near poverty-stricken existence. This, for me, is a form of grooming by the gambling companies.”
Bookies won’t take the machines out of shops – but will remove high stakes games which swallow £1.8billion a year and provide 56 per cent of profits.
That will mean so-called B2 FOBT terminals will become £2 slot machines. Bookies have claimed it will cost the Treasury £250million a year in lost tax and risk 20,000 jobs. They say even a £30 maximum would cost 10,000 jobs.
The Association of British Bookmakers said: “We fully understand public concern and there will be a stake cut to reduce the levels of losses.”
An online map shows punters in Hounslow High Street, West London – where there are 44 FOBTs in 11 bookies – blew the most in 2016, losing a whopping £2.8million.
Central London’s Tottenham tenham Court Road was next on £2.5million, million, ahead of two more London spots ts – the East End’s Commercial Road, ad, where £ 2.3million was lost, and Lea Bridge, Leyton, at £2million. llion.
Scotland’s big loser, on £2million, was Dumbarton on Road, Glasgow, said the Fairer r Gambling Campaign. A map of the he heaviest losses per local authority y is available at public.flourish.studio/ tudio/ visualisation/29590