Sky Bet open to increasing minimum bet guarantees

Sky Bet is open to increasing the minimum bet it offers all racing customers, CEO Richard Flint said yesterday at a Parliamentary debate over account restrictions.

Representing the industry, Flint downplayed the scale of the problem, saying that 97% of Sky Bet accounts could bet to win up to £20,000 on major UK races, with 2% restricted to £1,000 and 1% restricted to £100.

However Flint accepted the sector also “needed to do more” to work with customers and racing groups like the Horse Bettors Forum to counteract the increasing bad PR and lost customers from account restrictions.

Specifically he said Sky Bet would be “happy to discuss” increasing that minimum liability for restricted punters to “somewhere in the middle” of the current £100 and the HBF’s proposed £500 takeout.

The chief exec also accepted the need to communicate better with customers about restrictions, by explaining to customers up front why they might be restricted and giving fair warnings

Flint also pushed back at calls for a mandatory or statutory minimum bet liabilities, as seen in Australia, warning Sky lost £7m to restricted customers last year and such a guarantee would make racing and the vast majority of customers “poorer in every sense”.

In that scenario Flint also envisaged “parallel markets” where some customers would see markets with concession like Best Odds Guaranteed but with restrictions, while shrewder customers might see a different book with no restrictions but larger overrounds and no concessions.

Simon Rowlands, representing the HBF, said there was a need for betting to be aspirational, where a punter could win or at least lose less by applying skill and discipline.

He said the consequences of early closures and restrictions for racing were “harmful and are not being taken seriously enough”.

Lord Lipsey told the audience that bookmakers “should be congratulating winners, not denigrating them, if we want racing and betting to grow”.