‘Only losers on their books’: How gambling giants are blacklisting winners

It was a point made on a pro punting podcast two days after the Melbourne Cup.

“I think if one of us on this show had got the [$3.2 million first four] collect, I don’t think it would have made the news, and we might have got caught up in the T&Cs of a maximum payout of $500,000,” one of the pros said.

Another agreed: “They made sure they got their PR’s worth … being a once-in-a-year Melbourne Cup punter, I think they [Ladbrokes] got their mileage out of the extra payment through good will and mileage in the press. That would have been a per-customer decision.”

‘The amount of winners who are voided is insane’

Luke MacDonald is a pro punter who has become so tired of waging an online war with the corporates that he has all but given up.

“The amount of winners who are voided is insane,” he says. “And it shows how predatory in nature these big companies are, that they only have losers on their books.”

MacDonald claims the “corporates” have a number of strategies for cutting punters off.

He claims they accuse punters of working for a rival bookmaker, say your betting does not suit their operation, or use anti-money laundering or counter-terrorism funding laws.

MacDonald says he knows of examples of bookmakers shutting down an account after a client has had a win and then demanding payslips and unredacted bank accounts as proof of identity before they agree to pay out winnings.

That process that can take months, even years.

MacDonald says he has previously shared six months of bank statements with online bookmakers, only for his private information to be leaked on social media.

“A piece of information about where we shopped got leaked on Twitter,” he says.

“It was too hard for me to pinpoint which operator it was and try to hunt down the staff member. But that information was used against me to try to publicly shame me, which I didn’t care about, but I just thought, ‘geez, that’s pretty bad’.

“People can find out a lot about you by having six months of your bank statements. My kids’ daycare stuff is on there.”

Frank Pangallo, an independent member of South Australia’s Legislative Council, wants to stop corporate bookmakers from banning or restricting punters simply because they win.

He has introduced a bill to the South Australian parliament calling for the strategy to be outlawed.

Under Pangallo’s Authorised Betting Operations (User Bans) Amendment Bill 2024, betting companies would:

• No longer be allowed to ban, refuse or restrict punters simply because they win or have a certain betting strategy;
• No longer be allowed to change the odds on specific players just to save their own bottom line;
• Need to give written reasons why they have refused or placed restrictions on a punter’s betting; and,
• Not be able to exploit minimum payout or withdrawal limits to hold on to a customer’s winnings.

“They enter the market willingly, and pocket billions of dollars from losers willingly – so they cannot cry poor when it comes time to pay out a winner,” Pangallo said.

Pangallo believes other states will follow suit if the bill is supported in South Australia when he brings it to a vote in February.

“But my concern is that governments are intoxicated by gambling taxes that they receive, and seem to be reluctant to move on issues that are trying to protect gamblers,” he said.

‘They play dumb’

Ronny* has not been able to bet with big online bookmakers for the past three years after he and a friend tapped into a successful betting system in which they outlaid about $10,000 to win $40,000 across two months.

While living in Sydney, the pair had a link to a private equity firm that focused on racing algorithms that would suggest bets on “roughies”.

At the time, Ronny had a separate mobile phone and SIM card that was solely connected to a 3G or 4G network so that the bookmakers could not track him to a specific IP address.

“If you connect to Wi-Fi, they can immediately track it and they restrict anything that comes from that IP address,” he said.

Ronny said the algorithm would feed you a message that said, “in 40 seconds this race is about to start and this horse is likely to win, or place – it is currently at 10-1 and it should be at 4-1”.

“So you would put $50 to $100, sometimes $150, on the horse, and you end up with probably four bets where you lose – so, you lose $400 in four races – and then suddenly the fifth horse wins at 12-1 and you get back $1200,” he said.

He said they would go through two new betting companies every “week or two”.

“They are all linked, and once one betting agency realises they don’t like the way you are betting, they will ban you or restrict you betting at all,” he said.

Ronny said their gambling was not without risk – “I could have lost it all” – but he was still shut down for good. Now he can’t bet with mates.

“I have got a screenshot here from Sportsbet from this year after trying to join a $50 buy-in bet-with-mates group and the response is ‘you are unable to join a group, please call us to help resolve the issue’, and then you call them and they play dumb and they say, ‘sorry, we don’t have an answer for you’.

“So if I want to have a bet, it is either going into a TAB or I might have to use my partner’s account occasionally to put a $50 bet on.”

Laying a bet on someone else’s account, a practice called using a “bowler account”, is banned by online bookmakers under their terms and conditions.

If bookmakers discover you are betting on behalf of a third party, they will refuse to pay out winnings.

Punter bowled over

Last month, a punter failed in his quest to have Ladbrokes release $30,000 in winnings from his account because the betting giant claimed he was operating a “bowler account”.

Ladbrokes’ terms and conditions state “You must not permit another person to access your account and you must not use your account on behalf of or for the benefit of another person.”

The betting giant used “variations in speech patterns” from phone calls to support its case before the Northern Territory Racing and Wagering Commission – Ladbrokes.com.au is registered in the NT.

During the October hearing, the gambling giant said it had refused to release the cash in December 2022 because the account holder was unable to complete its “two-factor authentication” – a process triggered by a text message.

The punter claimed he could not access the text because he was overseas and did not have the right phone number.

He later tried to register a new phone number with the bookmaker, but it was found to be connected to another Ladbrokes account.

Ladbrokes told the commission that during several follow-up phone conversations “it was most likely not the complainant who engaged with Ladbrokes, but a person identifying himself as the complainant instead”. That is why it closed his account.

The commission found in Ladbrokes’ favour, agreeing that on the “balance of probabilities” a third party had been involved, but it said it could “not be confirmed with absolute certainty” that the voice on the phone did not belong to the account holder.

MacDonald said there would not be an issue with bowler accounts if winning punters were allowed to continue betting under their own names.

“There is no reason for anyone to have to come in the back door, if they are allowed to go in and bet under their own name,” he said.

“A lot of issues in the industry that have been created are on the back of restrictions.”

He said if authorities really cared about anti-money laundering or counter-terrorism financing laws, they would stop online bookmakers restricting or banning winning punters, which would eliminate the need for bowler accounts.

‘Totally amoral’

Another pro-punter, Brandon*, says he restricts himself to betting in person with on-course bookmakers at city race meetings on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

“It’s better value, I can get on quickly and it’s a more sociably enjoyable environment than sitting in a room with a computer screen in front of you all day,” he said.

“I find the corporates are just a blight on the industry. They’re leeches, and their business model is amoral.

“You are encouraged to lose, you are promoted to lose, and you are discouraged and restricted from winning.

“If you are a registered loser, and you consistently lose, they will bet you any amount. They give you free bets, they give you deposit matches, all sorts of things. To me that’s totally amoral.”

Ladbrokes told this masthead it “is a company that does not ban winners”.

A spokesperson for the betting giant said it adhered to the minimum bet limits required by the racing codes.

In reference to capping payouts, Ladbrokes highlighted its $3.2 million payout last month to the lucky punter who landed the Melbourne Cup first four, saying “we are not afraid to pay someone if they win big”.

The spokesperson said Ladbrokes sets its own betting markets, and was not reactive to what other bookmakers were doing.

“If other bookies want to copy our prices that’s not something we can control,” the spokesperson said.

The company said it had an obligation under legislation to clamp down on “bowler accounts”.

Brandon said “bookmakers are not bookmakers any more”. He said they are not taking risks, but using algorithms and strategies to analyse punters instead.

“They do form on their punters,” he said. “They say this bloke is losing 11 per cent per annum, so we can bet him to a certain amount.

“This bloke’s only just losing, he is losing only 1 per cent, so we will restrict him a little bit.

“This bloke is winning 3 per cent in NSW, so we won’t bet him in NSW, or he is winning 5 per cent on dogs, but losing 12 per cent on horses so we will restrict him on dogs.

“So they analyse the client, not the outcome of the event. That’s how they work, so it needs to go back to how it was.”

MacDonald said he knew of a case in which every member of a punters’ club had their winning bets voided by an online bookmaker 16 minutes after a race.

They had all bet to win $5000.

“The bet won, the bookmaker paid out the bet, and then they voided the winnings (removed the payouts from their accounts) and returned the stake,” he said.

“Only one of them has received an email so far as to why the bets were voided. Everyone else has just got radio silence.”

Sportsbet told this masthead that it “does not ban customers just because they are winning”.

“Every customer is able to bet with us, in their own name, as defined by respective minimum bet laws set by the racing bodies,” a Sportsbet spokesperson said.

“Our terms and conditions are in place to ensure a fair go for all customers, as is the case across many other industries. We responsibly manage customer accounts for regulatory, compliance and safer gambling reasons.”

Minimum bets

Sergio* is a full-time punter who bets on harness racing. He said he was able to get by because of minimum bet laws introduced by Harness Racing Victoria in January 2018.

The laws mean online bookmakers “must stand to lose a maximum of $500 for a fixed-odds win bet” on country races from no later than 10am on a race day. The amount increases to $1000 for metropolitan races.

“A lot of big punters sign up with 10-12 different accounts if they want to have a real crack because the corporates will only bet you to win $500,” Sergio says.

“To win thousands, you need multiple accounts.”

He said it took careful planning because all the bookmakers were linked.

“All of the corporates have algorithms for their odds,” he said. “They actually don’t employ someone to set the odds, do the markets, they are just copying what the main bookies have.

“For example, if I hit the TAB first [with a bet], all of the other bookies will roll the odds down, following the TAB, without actually taking a bet.

“So, I have got to hit them in order – smallest bookies to biggest bookies. A lot of them have algorithms but TAB, for example, won’t give a stuff if I hit something at one of those smaller bookies.

“But if I go the other way around, the smaller bookie will react straight away to the TAB price.”

Racing Victoria introduced a minimum bet limit for thoroughbred racing in October 2016, which applies after the final acceptances deadline.

Wagering service providers have to allow punters to win up to $2000 on a metropolitan win bet and $1000 on a non-metropolitan win bet.

But there are no minimum bet laws in place for betting on sports such as AFL, tennis or basketball.

“Legally, they don’t have to take any money on sports bets,” Sergio said.

‘Against our policy’

Brandon said he broke with his routine recently when he tried to have a $1000 cash bet on a horse at $3.50 using an electronic betting terminal, or EBT, at a Melbourne pub TAB.

“I went up to the EBT, and there was a sign on there saying, ‘no cash in this machine, please see the bar attendant for a voucher’,” he said.

But when he approached the bar, he was told by a staff member there was a “limit of $200”.

When he asked for five $200 vouchers in exchange for his $1000, he was told it was “against our money laundering policy”.

“I couldn’t get on,” he said. “I wanted to have a cash bet and couldn’t get on. I thought, ‘no wonder the turnover is suffering’.”

A TAB spokesman said: “TAB venue staff are trained in responsible gambling practices and can refuse to issue vouchers where they believe it is in the customer’s best interest not to.”

The betting organisation said it did not cap payouts to punters - “as highlighted by a punter who collected $728,000 from a $24 mystery bet on the Melbourne Cup” - but it did cut off or restrict losing punters.

“We are introducing new technology to detect changes in customer behaviour faster so we can intervene sooner to protect customers from gambling harm,” the spokesman said.

Taxing the punter

Increases in taxes have become another bugbear for punters. They say, ultimately, these extra costs are worn by the customers.

From January 2019, the state government introduced a point of consumption tax to replace the wagering and betting tax structures.

It was a way for the state to properly tax online bookmakers who are often licensed outside of Victoria.

Both Ladbrokes.com.au and Sportsbet.com.au are licensed in the Northern Territory. Ladbrokes is owned by Entain, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange, while Sportsbet is part of the Flutter Entertainment Group, which is a worldwide online gambling operator with headquarters in Dublin.

“Because they [the corporate bookmakers] were eluding taxes, the governments and tax authorities said, ‘we are not getting our whack out of this’, so they introduced all these taxes,” Brandon said.

“But the corporates responded by just putting up their percentages. They used to bet to 110 per cent [for a market], now they bet to 125 per cent. To the point where the turnover is now dropping.”

The Victorian point of consumption tax jumped from 10 per cent to 15 per cent in July, with half of the income guaranteed to be funnelled back to all racing codes. In other words, the Victorian racing industry is now welded to an income from the online bookmaker model.

“The government and racing bodies are taxing the industry to death,” MacDonald said. “When they are increased, it is passed on to the punters. When the online bookmakers have poorer margins, they have to cut down on the winners.

“But winners are a big part of the game. If more winners are allowed, it would make the margins sharper. So losers would lose at a slower rate.

“It is a cycle of poor management. Governments and sports administrations want greater returns from tax, but they are losing revenue.”

Racing Victoria said gambling revenue fell 10 per cent last financial year, and is already down nine per cent this year.

The other side effects, MacDonald said, was that more and more gamblers were turning to the black market.

Political mission

Whether Pangallo’s bill can start a chain reaction remains to be seen. But he is determined to make a difference.

“The conglomerates who own these companies – like Flutter Entertainment (Sportsbet) or Entain Group (Neds and Ladbrokes) – have resources in the billions of dollars,” he said.

“Their algorithms pick up on every tiny detail – from the way you swipe on your phone application to the IP address you use when making bets.

“But advances of technology have seen a new genre of smart and well-resourced gamblers attempting to improve their chances of landing winners. Some punters are just really good at analysis, while others utilise complex computer algorithms.

“As a result, these greedy betting companies have wised up and devised their own way to ensure they still hold the upper hand – by simply banning the punter.

“In any other industry, that would be unconscionable, if not illegal conduct.”

*Names changed to protect privacy.

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