Public grilling by MPS was clearly too much to face
Was it cowardice, arrogance, or just bad judgment that kept bookmakers away?
Last week the senior executives of Britain’s leading bookmakers were “invited” by the Gambling Related Harm All Party Parliamentary Group to go and explain the behaviour of their companies.
This was not the sort of invitation that you put on the mantelpiece to swank a bit when the neighbours come round. It was more like a summons from our democratically elected Members of Parliament to come and get a beating; one they were keen to hand out even though all hell was letting loose on the you-knowwhat front.
So credit where credit is due to John Coates (Bet365’s joint CEO) and Ian Proctor (Sky Bet’s CEO) for turning up and admitting that the betting industry has not done enough to avoid harming vulnerable individuals.
But where the heck were the rest of the CEOS who had been scheduled to appear, but declined at the last moment? Kenny Alexander (GVC Holdings), Philip Bowcock (William Hill) and Peter Jackson (Flutter Entertainment).
Their excuses were: business commitments, diary pressure and travel commitments. Blah, blah, blah.
In my opinion, there can be only three real reasons why they ducked out and sent other executives along to face the music.
1 Cowardice. Perhaps they genuinely feel guilty that their businesses have exploited the vulnerable and ruined their lives but were not “man” enough to come and admit as much.
2 Arrogance. After all, if Mark Zuckerberg was above attending such roastings, why should they? There is no legal compulsion for them to turn up, which makes a bit of a mockery of the whole thing.
3 Or was it just incredibly bad judgment? Yes, this parliament is probably the most despised in history, but there are still good individuals working hard for the betterment of the most vulnerable in society, who are part of this group.
Iain Duncan Smith, for example, who has done amazing stuff at the Department of Work and Pensions to help those at the bottom of the pile, found time to attend during a frantic day.
It certainly was not for a bunch of bookmakers to pass judgment on the validity of those individual MP’S to “put their feet to the fire”.
Duncan Smith was not there just to make up the numbers and he was bang on the money when he raised the issue of VIP customers.
A VIP customer in bookmaker parlance is someone who loses heavily. It would be more accurate to class them as Very Unstable Persons (VUPS).
Of course there are the occasional billionaires who want to gamble heavily, and they are fair game. Luckily for the bookmakers, quite a few of them over the years have had more money than sense.
There was a story, perhaps apocryphal, doing the rounds in the 1980s, concerning one such high roller. The clerks used to write his bets into the trading ledger in pencil. If they lost, they would rub them out and personally collect the losses at a discount; which suited both parties. But if they won, the clerks inked them in and the company had to pay. Nice work if you can get it!
Since the hearing last week, Bowcock has stood down as the CEO of William Hill.
Carolyn Harris (Labour), the chair of the group, described him as “running scared and cowardly in the extreme” and as a man whose company had “fed addiction, amassed vast profits from the vulnerable and taken home a vast pay packet”.
Her honourable friend and colleague Conor Mcginn (Labour), on the other hand, paid tribute to him as “hugely respected in parliament for leading the industry in taking steps to tackle problem gambling, and also for his strong support of sports like darts, boxing and horse racing at both elite and grass-roots level”.
So clearly the Labour Party is split when it comes to Bowcock. Now there is a surprise.