The final flutter
Changes in gambling habits may kill off dog racing for good
Feb 9th 2013 |From the print edition
http://www.economist.com/printedition/2013-02-09>
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four has taken the lead!” shouts an excited commentator as they come around
the first bend. The race could be at any number of gritty greyhound tracks
across the country. But it exists only on a screen in a south London betting
shop. The dogs are computer-animated; the commentary is pre-scripted and
automatic.
Virtual greyhound racing is just one of many computer-generated betting
opportunities at British bookmakers. There are also virtual horse races and
even virtual football matches. Men cluster around touch-screen machines,
feeding £20 ($31) notes into a virtual roulette table. This computer
wizardry is making lots of money for betting companies and giving gamblers a
little more variety. But the move from real dogs to virtual ones threatens
to kill off a working-class pastime.
Greyhound racing has been in decline since the 1960s, says Lord Lipsey, a
former chairman of the British Greyhound Racing Board (and a former writer
for The Economist). Before then it thrived partly because gambling
“off-course”—away from race tracks—was illegal. In the 1950s as many as
70,000 spectators would flock to tracks such as White City in west London to
drink and bet. The capital alone had 33 greyhound-racing stadiums. Now there
are just 25 registered tracks in the whole of Britain.
Having crippled the dog-racing industry, off-course betting helped keep it
alive. Because gamblers still needed something to bet on, bookmakers began
paying stadium operators to hold races in the late 1960s. Under this system,
known as the “Bookmakers’ Afternoon Greyhound Service” (BAGS), a single
meeting can generate as much as £10,000 for a stadium operator. On top of
this, bookmakers pay a levy from bets to help cover animal-welfare costs and
stump up prize money for the biggest races. The support of the bookmakers is
now vital to the industry’s survival, says James McCreadie of the British
Greyhound Racing Board.
Virtual gambling now threatens that business model. Since 2008 the gross
gambling yield (a measure of profit) generated by betting on dogs in
bookmakers has fallen by 20% to £240m, according to data from the Gambling
Commission, the industry regulator. Over the same period the profit
generated by fixed-odds betting terminals of all kinds has increased by 37%
to over £1.4 billion—more than the total made from horses, dogs and football
combined. Greyhounds are less important to the bookies than ever.
To counter the decline, the BAGS operators hope to sell TV rights overseas.
They reckon they can lure gamblers away from betting on horse-racing, which
costs bookmakers even more. But in the meantime the industry is shrivelling.
On December 29th Oxford’s stadium held its last race, becoming the latest of
many closures. Like the tracks at Walthamstow and Portsmouth, it will be
converted into housing. Other tracks, such as that in Wimbledon, in
south-west London, are being allowed to fall into disrepair before going the
same way. In 1928 Winston Churchill dismissed greyhound racing as little
more than “animated roulette”. It may turn out to be little match for actual
animated roulette.