HUG A BOOKIE

ONE OF THE BROKERS SHOUTED from his desk to my office: “Will, I have Radio 4 on the line.” Oh crumbs, I thought, this is no time to close the door and hide under the desk – which I have done a few times during Cheltenham.

It all started with an innocuous tweet.

I had copied a page of the government’s white paper on gambling – having speed-read it – and wrote: “In the 268 pages of the White paper, I'm pleased they squeezed in 1 page on the benefits of gambling – 1) £2bn in tax 2) added £6bn to economy 3) 100k jobs 4) No betting, no proper racing 5) IT’S BLOODY FUN FOR THE VAST MAJORITY OF ADULTS. ”

Sometimes you can write brilliant, pithy comments on Twitter and not a soul will notice. Other times, you write something chippy and worthless, and it gets what you call ‘traction’. Soon the tweet had been retweeted 35 times – which is a lot for me. I was duly summoned to the BBC and spoke live on BBC Radio 4’s PM with Evan Davis. I’m told there are a couple of million listeners. Of course, the programme started with a lady who had been financially crippled by gambling addiction. It was another sad story that gave a very graphic depiction of problem gambling in the UK.

After getting over some nerves, I made my case. The industry has been turbocharged by technology and has been rather slapdash in their duty of care. However, a combined effort had now made us pretty good at protecting the 1 per cent – those who have the propensity to be addicted to gambling.

Many of you reading this will know the tough measures we have put in place to make sure you can afford your gambling passions. The libertarians among you may have decided not to share personal financial details. Others I know have decided to take their business to Montenegro and Panama. Each to their own, I suppose. For me, the worry is the reputational damage and knock-on effect this has on UK racing. Later that week, I spoke on the brilliant Nick Luck on Sunday

I suggested racing needs to “Hug a bookie”, which got a laugh from the TV panel, exemplifying the challenge racing in the UK has. There are many involved who don’t really understand how the sport is funded.

Let me make this crystal clear: apart from the shaking-down of a few sheikhs over the years, it’s bookies that pay for the sport, or more precisely, punters. Fitzdares have members who contribute more to the levy in one afternoon than most of us spend on racing attendance, ownership and everything in-between, in a whole year.

THE SNOBBERY TOWARDS BOOKMAKING has to stop now. Bookmakers are no longer fast-talking spivs. They are either small ‘service driven’ independents or massive conglomerates. There is little in-between. And surely there should be some pride that we in Britain are worldclass at bookmaking. Bet365 is Europe’s biggest and richest tech company. It has done more to close the gender pay gap than anyone out there. And it pays more tax in the UK than Google, Meta and all the world’s tech companies combined.

But where does this snobbery come from? I have a controversial view. It’s a class thing. The posh have always loved racing and a punt, the working class even more so. It’s the middle class, the professional class, that have been sniffy about it – and shamefully I have to admit I’m pretty middle-class myself!

So, I ask politely, as the industry has its knuckles wrapped and the government takes its pound of flesh, that we all accept and promote bookmaking. Not as a necessary evil, but for the bloody fun that it is. And fun that occasionally buys you a car. Betting, as our chairman always says, is the chilli flakes on your eggs. And God damn it, we all need a bit of spice in our lives. n

William Woodhams is CEO of Fitzdares and tweets from @WIGWOOD (in case you want to see what all the fuss is about).