October
AugustA hiding to nothing
In the Winning Post of July 20, I raised a query about statements from TattsBet regarding the rounding down of dividends.
Whilst I am sure that in 1992, when the government abolished the one-cent and two-cent coins, the TAB (at least in Victoria, where I lived at the time) adopted a well publicised policy of rounding dividends down to the next five or 10 cents (I can’t exactly recall which) to provide a fund to pay punters $1.05 on a dividend that calculated to $1 or less.
I am quite sure my statement was correct as to the situation at that time. Apparently circumstances and the law have changed.
In the absence of any response in Winning Post to the query raised in my letter, I wrote to Barrie Fletton, chief operating officer of TattsBet, requesting clarification.
In a courteous reply, Mr Fletton explained that with the privatisation of the Queensland TAB in 1999, had not roundings to the lower 10 cents been offered, the privatisation deal would not have attracted the interest of sufficient investors for the float to proceed. He went on to say that roundings provide a major component of TAB revenue.
One can well imagine the size of that revenue when the number of dividends paid by the TAB in 2013 compared to 1992 is considered. Every horse race, trot race, dog race and numerous sporting events nationally and internationally — all dividends rounded down to the next 10 cents.
TattsBet’s Brad Tamer, in his reply to the initial contributor to this story in Winning Post, Gayle Brownlie (6/7), tells us that TattsBet dips into this massive revenue stream to provide money back when the dividend (after roundings) is less than $1.
Surely in the interests of fair play, ethics and honesty, and the basic gambling axiom, "If you can lose, you must be able to win," when a commodity is to return a $1 or less dividend, that runner from the TAB’s point of view should be declared a non participant and all money refunded on those bets, regardless of the outcome of the race.
Should the commodity win, with the win dividend more than $1 but the place dividend $1 or less, then only the place bet would be refunded while the win dividend would be paid as normal.
If the same commodity ran unplaced, win bets would be lost while place bets would be refunded and normal (reduced) dividends would be paid on the three placegetters.
In other words, only those bet paying $1 or less would be affected.
You see, while TattsBet provides funds to pay punters their money back when the dividend would otherwise have been less than $1, it does so only if the commodity runs in a position that would pay a dividend. If it does not, the punter loses without ever having had a chance of winning.
Sound complicated? Perhaps, but surely in this modern, computer-dominated world this is possible. I emphasise the present system defies the basic fair principle of gambling mentioned above.
Brighton (Qld)