Saturday, April 07, 2007

The Gambling Commission will hope to take steps today towards securing the
open sharing of information relating to the betting habits of sports stars.
The Commission will meet with those from the industry to discuss various
matters relating to sports betting and hope to see those accounts owned by
sport stars flagged if their betting breaches their rules and regulations.
Much has been made of betting scandals in sport, none more so than that
involved in English football. Concerned that insider information is being
used to profit from betting, Harry Redknapp, Portsmouth manager, was asked
by the Football Association (FA) last year to disclose all phone records and
bank statements covering the period of his controversial move from
arch-rivals Southampton after £16.7 million was traded on the betting
exchange website, Betfair.com. Ultimately, no charges were brought against
Redknapp or anyone connected to him. However, bookmakers believe that openly
sharing information is going too far and that the new Gambling Act due to be
introduced in September will be enough to protect sports from cheating. Then
there is also the issue of the sharing of personal information between two
parties violating the Data Protection Act. Nevertheless, the commission hope
to reach some kind of compromise which would involve tracking the betting
activity of all punters, not just sports stars, who place large and
suspicious bets. "Our proposal is that we should introduce a licence
condition that would require licensees (gambling companies) to take a
risk-based approach with all reasonable steps to identify customers who
place bets over a significant threshold limit, either in one bet or over a
number of transactions in one day," the commission said in a consultation
document. The commission have made it clear that gambling companies do not
require their customers to agree to their personal information being shared
as a condition of service, but there could be advantages for those that did.
"We therefore suggest that, while we will not require, through a licence
condition, that betting licensees make it a condition of business that a
customer must agree to personal information being made available to the
sport governing bodies, there may be advantages for licensees in including
such terms as a condition of their business," the commission said.