Terminals provide temptation

Press, 20 December 1988, Page 39

Terminals provide temptation

NZPA-Reuter Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s insatiable punters, investors of a record 28.3 billion Hong Kong dollars ($5.8 billion) on the horses last season, found it even easier to spend their money from last week.

The Customer Input Terminal, launched jointly by the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club and Hong Kong Telephone, looks set to do for betting what the credit card did for impulsive shoppers. All the avid punter needs is a standard telephone socket, a handsized terminal and an account with the Jockey Club.

All forms of gambling are outlawed in Hong Kong except betting on horses, and that can be done only through the Jockey Club. The system, which the club claims is a world first, will place any form of bet at the press of a button. One particular button, to be used only by the brave or the lucky, informs the flutterer of the night’s balance sheet. “That thing could bankrupt me tomorrow,” one gambler said at the launch. Those with an international gambling addiction are also well catered for — the terminal permits the punter to chance the odds at meetings in other countries. But it does not provide foreign exchange rates. The club has operated a phone betting service since 1974, which regularly handles more than half a million calls on a race day, wreaking havoc with Hong Kong’s phone system, and even this hasn’t stopped 50,000 people arriving for twiceweekly race meetings, held at Shatin in the New Territories and Happy Valley on Hong Kong Island.

Racing experts say the terminal is initially likely to be the preserve of the hardened gambler or the big spender. The Jockey Club has commissioned 25,000 of the mini-terminals, and each will cost the punter an initial payment of SHKIOOO ($207), with an annual rental of SHK3OO.