STAGGERING BETTING BILL

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 112, 14 May 1938, Page 22

STAGGERING BETTING BILL

DOMINION'S £20,000,000 A YEAR ONLY A MITE COMPARED WITH ENGLAND'S * (By "Rangatira.")' Though it is easy to assess the amount of legitimate betting done in New Zealand in a year, it is next to impossible to estimate ~the actual sum that passes in a twelve months through other channels. The legitimate avenues are the totalisator (which will account for roughly about £7,000,000 this year) and the art unions. Add . to this the very vague sum that is handled by the bookmakers, who ■ are outside the law, and perhaps one would riot be far astray in ; a guess that gambling in the Dominion, as distinct from ordinary business speculation, accounts for at least £20,000,000 a year at present. Yet such a sum is a mite compared with the £350,000,000 ' that statistics reveal was thrown after horses'and; dogs, into football pools,, and through automatic gambling machines alone in . England last year.

to a recent article in the •"Birmingham Gazette," betting is easily Britain's biggest industry. During the year England spends more on betting tlian on her total imports of food, drink, and tobacco. The betting bill is larger than the sum set aside for the Navy, the' Army, the Health services, and Education combined. A total of £350,000,000 is a conservative estimate. At a recent survey by the Christian Social Council the figures were placed as high as £500,000,000. No other industry, not even mines, or railways, or iron and steel, can approach such a sum for a year. GAMBLING FACILITIES. Four important developments have taken place in the betting industry in England in recent years. They are the totalisator, the Irish Sweepstake, greyhound-racing, and the football pools. The Irish Sweepstake is declining in popularity. Greyhound-racing, on the other hand, is growing in favotrr. Football pools, too, have swollen to mammoth proportions, attaining a £40,000,000 a year turnover within five years; but with them saturation is in sig£t, as already members of three out of four families are said to be pool fans. . Horse-racing is still the. most popular form of betting. A reliable estimate says that £250,000,000 is thrown after the horses every year. Bets range from the annual bob on the Derby by cautious Mr. Everyman to the princely wagers of the wealthy owners and pro- - fessionals. Automatic gambling machines, a dubious product of the American genius for mechanising everything, even chance, are under a cloud. . The Solice do not like them, and the public istrust them. They take only about £10,000,000 a year. This amount is scarcely enough to build and equip two hospitals. ' Football pools put a "kick"? into life for 10,000,000 investors over 38 weeks of /the year. The biggest pool has a clientele of 2,500,000, and it is estimated that the total profits of all the pools would be about £2,000,000 for the season recently closed. j The pools give employment to 30,000 directly. This figure excludes the enormous amount of indirect labour in the paper, printing, and transport industries. The pools add to the Post Ofiice revenue nearly a- quarter of a million pounds a week— £150,000 in stamps and £70,000 poundage orv,postal orders. The pay-out from the pools averages 80 per cent, of receipts. Fifteen per cent, is for expenses and 5 per cent, for profits. Bad debts are counted as expenses and they therefore cost the producers but bad debts are few, for little credit is given. The management of every French, casino must regard the football pools across the Channel with envy. For French casinos hand over to the French Government 60 per cent, of their gross Srofits, plus income-tax, and another 3 per cent, goes to the local authorities. Casinos, too, have expenses that pools do not carry—orchestras, flower gardens, chefs des jeux (who earn up to £1000 a'year), firemen, armed guards, footmen, expensive carpets, cabarets, swimming pools, and golf courses. GREYHOUND-RACING. v . The progress of the greyhound-racing industry has been only slightly less spectacular than that of the pools. But this business .has a more substantial r .air of permanence and stability. Progress since greyhound-racing { Started in 1925 has been uninterrupted. . The money invested in it is nearly j £7,000,000, and it gives direct employ- i ment to 20,000 people v To date it has ♦ paid about £1,250,000 in entertainment i tax, and it has 25,000.000 fans. The . two finest tracks (White City and Har- { ringay) cost respectively £85,000 and t £110,000. Britain appears to be going , to the dogs in style. t , there is money in dogs. If one / buys a very good dog (one can feed him for ten or fifteen shillings a week) r one can win £14.000 in prize-money, v That was Mick the Miller's record. ( When the dog retires one may earn * as much again with him—his £50 stud * lees at least will more than cover one's y super-tax. v r This is betting as it is in England, j. Britain's biggest industry. Whether it c Ist good or evil, or Whether it should r be suppressed is beside the point. The £ House of Commons some time agq de- j ■ feated a Bill to make pools illegal by 287 votes to 24. v The chief criticism that can be levbilled against the betting industry is nut the vast enerjor and the .enormous t anrovnt of capital it employs is waste. I H is like a vast, complicated, and high- p ly-expensive mechanism which works s unceasingly and produces exactly noth- a ing at au. It attracts capital from a wide area and deposits it in the most _ Unlikely reservoirs. Betting creates i. lots of capital in the nation's money f circulation system. That doubtless is ? the reason why the British Goverti- Jj ment will not permit casinos to be »

set up at Tunbridge Wells or Harrogate. Horses, dogs, totalisators, pools —yes! Casinos—no! CONSERVATIVE ESTIMATE. New Zealand, of course, has not gone a fraction of the length they have taken in recent times in England. Legitimate betting in the Dominion is confined to the two Government monopolies—the totalisator (on horse-racing only) and the art unions. The avenues outside the law are the bookmakers, who will oblige in horse-racing, football, the dogs, gun-shoots, and occasional other games of chance, and the overseas consultations. The sweepstake prizes that are from time to time won by New Zealanders indicate that quite- a 'sum must be sent away every year to the consultations in Australia and Ireland. There if undoubtedly also an appreciable amount of private sweep-staking in the Dpminion. Were all these modes of gambling assessable it would probably be discovered that £20,000,000 of gambling is no more than a conservative estimate for New Zealand. A comparison with other items in the Dominion's annual expenditure reveals the magnitude of the betting "industry" in New Zealand and places it on a comparable basis with Britain's. For instance, the amount spent last jyear on the three arms of defence was only £1,200,518. The scheme of superannuation and health services proposed by the Government is estimated to cost £17,850,000 in the first full year. The existing system of pensions and susteiiance requires only £8 995 000. The biggest indi/stry in the Dominion isthe. dairying, and butter and cheese' exports for the year ending in June, 1937,' amounted to £21,716,529. The wool" cheque for the-same twelve months was £18,770,643. Then recall again that betting in New Zealand for the'present year may account for an approximate; £20,000,000.