The 1990’s had just begun when an Englishman with a rounded Italian like that of the frontmen of the rock bands of some twenty-five years earlier treading the boards in our country, was touring institutional and other offices talking about betting and betting. Graham Wood at the time worked for Ssp one of the first foreign bookmakers to enter the Italian market. A granitic experience that was gradually exploited by other international players. For a few years now (and with a few hairs less) Graham Wood has represented Bet 365, one of the most active foreign operators in our country and above all the one, among the foreign ones, that has been most interested in horse racing. Fair enough, then, to take a tour of the horse betting market seen from another angle….
“You mentioned my long experience with the Italian betting market, In fact in 2027 I will celebrate 35 years of work on the Italian betting front. Well, as far as the horse game is concerned, I don’t remember a disruptive event such as the reduction of taxation on the fixed-odds game for at least 10 years, i.e. since 2015 when they switched to taxation on the margin instead of on the game played. It was a wonderful surprise because burnt by previous experiences I didn’t have high hopes, instead I have to say that Dr Chiodi and all the Masaf staff really did a great job.”
What can change now?
“Look, it’s no mystery that until a few weeks ago accepting fixed-odds bets on horses, particularly trotting, meant almost certainly working at a loss or at best defending a very narrow margin of profit. Now I hope that managers, especially those of betting ‘shops’, will give more space to horse racing on their premises and perhaps even increase the market with other initiatives. On our own we have to work to try to make the product more attractive.”
Perhaps by working on odds?
“Also, but it should be pointed out that Bet 365 in 2024 had the highest payout of all its competitors, reaching 93.5 per cent, and within our group we are very proud of this. This does not detract from the fact that we can still try to improve. In fact, I must confess that, in a meeting we had in recent days, the head of our company’s ‘trading’ section ‘advised’ us to be more aggressive in our payout. We will therefore always try to have the best quotas in the market.”
Do you have any other plans?
“It is no secret that we have asked several times in the past for the possibility of offering multiples that could include not only horse racing but also other sports, football, tennis etc. We firmly believe that this can help to broaden the range of horse bettors. We will ask Adm again for this variant; we hope to be able to go ahead with the project. Then taking advantage of the lower taxation we would like to try to introduce ‘live’ betting on horse racing as well, perhaps on the longer races, say from 2400 metres upwards. After all, we have seen that in sport, live betting nowadays moves as much as betting before the start of the event.”
Let’s be a little naughty… there are those who claim that Bet 365, beyond the odds, works very defensively especially against those players who win a little too much, closing some accounts…
“We start from the assumption that by working in the market we accept risk and therefore we must still protect ourselves and we must also fight against phenomena of alleged collusion and attempts at fraud. Obviously these are not frequent and controllable episodes, but, having said that, if it happens that suddenly there are dormant accounts or almost dormant accounts that make a single, well-defined bet, of significant volume, and follow a defined trend, it is evident that we are dealing with a type of player that does not fit into our canons. It sometimes happens that in a race of 10/12 horses there are requests for only one subject. If this is due to our misaligned quota compared to the competition it is not a problem, otherwise our risk centre issues an alert. That’s all.”
Bet 356 outside Italy has an extensive racing and event sponsorship business. Here we obviously have to deal with the stakes imposed by the Dignity Decree, what do you plan to do…?
“Today before this chat, we had a meeting for next year’s budget and it was confirmed that for 2025 there is a desire to repeat on a larger scale what we did at Capannelle in the autumn with the “Bet 365 scores” brand. We would like to repeat the experience at other racecourses and on other important days, and we are making enquiries in this regard. In this way we also hope to contribute to giving more liquidity to horse racing operators such as racecourses and perhaps, why not, also to owners to whom we hope that the situation regarding the payment of premiums, on which I know the Ministry is working hard, will stabilise as soon as possible.”
