Joemac

A betting dispute blew up over the weekend on X (twitter), when a punter posted an email he’d got from AK Bets online team.

Anthony Kaminskas, founder of AK Bets, responded to one of Ian’s messages:

The ensuing tweets racked up a third of a million views. AK Bets has a YouTube channel with weekly broadcasts, and Mr Kaminskas spoke on today’s edition about the fallout from the dispute. In short, he defended the decision of his traders to close the account, but accepted his communication had been poor in responding on X. He also held close to his key defence that this punter was, effectively, in the know and had intentionally targeted what Mr Kaminskas called ‘stale prices’. I’ve been in this game for many years and that is the first time I’ve heard that term.

He explained that his operation subscribed to a ‘feed’ provided by a third party. That feed supplied prices on thousands of markets, constantly automatically monitoring those prices and changing them to reflect the weight of money.  The punter, Ian, used a well known odds curating site Oddschecker to compare prices from many bookmakers, and it was via that platform he saw the AK prices. AK Bets had not altered the price in line with the market, claiming their feed was to blame for the ‘stale’ price secured by Ian.

Aside from the implications for AK Bets on the PR front, the open discussion about bookmakers closing accounts offers an unusually frank perspective from the bookmaking side, and one that is difficult to condemn if you are an objective observer. No business can tolerate customers who damage its bottom line. Technology has provided tools for bookies to pinpoint customers whose profiles suggest they will eat into profits in the medium to long term. Any business owner would want to act to prevent that, and those responsible to shareholders are legally obliged to do so unless they believe the situation can, eventually, be turned in their favour.  Nor should racing complain as its levy payment from bookies is based on a percentage of profits. But from a PR angle for the sport it’s an impossible sell.

Only a tiny percentage of those who go racing or spend money in the sport are non punters. The punting side alone is the key reason many take an interest in racing. Now the message to them, and to anyone else considering becoming a customer of the sport, is that you will not be allowed to win. We bookies have a mechanism that lets us act early, and we make no allowances for the prospect that you might become profitable to us in the long term. Unless you are happy to be a loser forever, we do not want you.

Racing is saying very clearly now to its prospective customers, ‘we only want losers.’ Is that a club you’d rush to join?

Many disaffected punters will initially take to the black market, but when those bookies welch and disappear overnight, that should stem the tide big time.

Ironically, the UK Tote is in an ideal position to offer a home to every racing punter. Payouts will be smaller than what they were used to as smart fixed odds bettors, but at least they could have a bet without restriction, assuming the liquidity in the pools was sufficient.

Racing should make a healthy Tote service its top priority. The investment levels needed would be crushing, and the changes needed in the Tote system – deduction levels, bet offerings, distribution etc – would be onerous in the short to medium term, but the prospect of a steady and consistent strengthening of the Word Pool in our ever-shrinking global village could make all the pain and investment worthwhile. Above all, the chance for racing to finally detach its suckling mouth from the bookies’ tit would make every sacrifice worthwhile.

Rather than racing battling proposed government tax rises on gambling, it should campaign for a Tote monopoly with its own lower tax system based on the argument that every penny of profit is returned to the sport. Given the noises bookmakers have been making that racing is at best a break even betting market now, they should have no credible objection to a Tote monopoly.

There’ll be a horde of naysayers as always, but, writing as someone who’s worked in this game for more than 50 years, I cannot see how racing can survive the next twenty to thirty years without control of its own betting markets via the Tote.

Joe McNally

27-10-25

EDIT:

After reading comments about this article on social media, I ought to expand on the tote monopoly factor. The tote as it stands could not come close to providing the type of service that would be needed to run a healthy and effective monopoly on behalf of racing.

Such a project would need to be a tote reimagined and would take many many millions to deliver. It would have to offer much better perceived value than it currently does. Multiple bets would need to be available as well as new tote bets alongside the current ones

Getting everything right on the tech side would be vital, especially for distribution: top notch apps and online service along with unbreakable security.

Sadly, I know it is a pipedream. A high-functioning BHA with everyone focused and on the same side would face a mighty challenge to bring this about, so the BHA of today (and yesterday, and last year, and ten years ago) has zero chance.

The snouts are still in the trough, which is half dry and not being refilled. The interested factions want only a rewarding trough position. Short termism will prove to be racing’s terminal disease.

Joe McNally

28-10-25