AK Bets founder: Betting black market is thriving
Anthony Kaminskas tells Irish Racing four out of five customers refuse to provide documents to comply with affordability checks
The founder of on-course and online bookmaker AK Bets, Anthony Kaminskas, has insisted the betting black market is “absolutely thriving”.
Speaking on Irish Racing’s weekly programme, the 36-year-old outlined how affordability checks were encouraging an increasing number of punters to seek out unlicensed means to get their bets down.
He also said 80% of AK Bets customers refuse to provide the firm with proof of income such as wage slips and bank statements when they trigger an affordability check.
“Problem gambling activists would say that’s a great result – 80% of people don’t bet with you,” Kaminskas told the show.
“What I would say to those people is where do you think that 80% of people go? Do you think they stop gambling totally?
“What happens is this they might start at bet365 or Paddy Power and they are requested documents at those places, so they move further and further down the food chain. I’m a realist, I’m further down that food chain – I’ve just gone online.
“People then find me and bet with me. We request documents but if they are not going to engage in that process they go further and further down the food chain.”
Kaminskas, who previously worked for Paddy Power for 10 years, added: “A lot of people talk about the black market [but] not many people have an understanding of black-market gambling in the UK.
“I have some awareness of it and it’s absolutely thriving. It’s getting bigger and bigger and bigger. There are more unlicensed bookmakers taking bets in the UK and Ireland than probably before the legislation [legalising betting shops] came in in the early 60s in the UK.”
Evidence would seem to suggest punters are turning to people who will lay bets via messaging services like WhatsApp and Telegram.
A Racing Post survey published in February involving more 10,000 British and Irish bettors found that 11% knew someone who has used a black-market bookmaker.
Some 3.6% admitted to betting with a black-market bookmaker, be it a website not licensed by the Gambling Commission, a messaging app or other means.
Kaminskas went on to say that a subset of customers using unlicensed layers do not contribute any tax revenue to the state through their betting.
He said: “They go missing from the system. The customers that do have [problem gambling] issues fall further and further underground, and you exacerbate the problem essentially.”
The UK government’s white paper on overhauling Britain’s gambling laws has proposed “light touch” background checks (county court judgments, bankruptcies, typical postcode affluence) on net losses of £125 on a rolling month or £500 within a rolling year.
However, the recommendations call for “enhanced spending checks” for those customers who rack up net losses of £1,000 in a rolling 24-hour period or £2,000 over a rolling 90 days.
Both amounts for the enhanced spending checks would be halved for those gamblers under the age of 25.
The government has modelled a hit to industry gross gambling yield (GGY) of between £380m and £710m, or 6% to 11% of GGY.