The one true universal city of Manchester has always suffered from being a testing ground for the antisocial policies of a centralised government. From the cotton mills and workhouses of the industrial revolution (sic) through to the supercasino and psychopathic football club ownerships of today, we are the laboratory. Fortunately, Manchester has always been the hotbed of resistance to these imperial and post-imperial psychopathic ventures.
Let's do bookmakers/casinos and football...
Ladbrokes promoted the supercasino bid of Blackpool and were devastated when Manchester won the bid to become the nation's addictive capital. This disappointment was further fuelled through the realisation that Ladbrokes former parent company, the Hilton Group, would be quids in due to their ownership of the one skyscraping hotel in the city. The double whammy hit the Ladbrokes share price and it has been downhill ever since. Any sense of schadenfreude after Gordon Brown unpicked the gambling strategies of his predecessors in office was offset by a proper year of annus horribilis for the Magic Sign.
The new Gambling Act 2005 undermined many of the illegal tactics that are commonplace in British casinos. Apart from the obvious and legal ruses like pumping oxygen into the casino, encouraging the coincidence of alcohol and gambling and the barring of any winning clients who might undermine the house through card counting in blackjack, for example, the new Act limits other dodgy tactics relating to the actual gaming side of the operation. The new regime in British government decided that 16 smaller casinos might be a preferable strategy (spreading the misery around?!) and a posse of local councils desperate for urban regeneration registered their interests. But it seems that the restrictions imposed by Brown's lot are too onerous for the potential casino operators when compared with the anything-goes attitude of the psychopath formerly known as Blair. A Ladbrokes spokesperson moaned: "We have conducted a review of our casino strategy and have decided to withdraw from the process due to the length of time it would take to generate sufficient return on the capital spend required". Shame. So the remains of the government's supercasino strategy is in tatters - if Ladbrokes cannot make the new casino strategy pay, who can? To be honest, who cares?
Well, we should, because Britain's leading bookmaker is not so similarly restrained in other areas of its business operations. In Ladbrokes' Licensed Betting Offices (LBOs), there are 8200 gaming machines (located with post-modern pseudo-ergonomic design). In their most recent accounts, Ladbrokes proudly boast that there has been a 25% increase in gross on these machines although they bemoan the lower net sales growth in online poker and the "permanent decline" in the profitability of horseracing. Taking these bullets in reverse order.
The antisocial and highly manipulative control of the horserace betting markets in Britain by the likes of Ladbrokes has destroyed a pastime as punters and spectators have voted with their feet in the face of the rampant corruption of this alleged sport. Horserace meetings used to have crowds equivalent to football; most are now relevant only for their seediness and the stench of insider trading. A more controlled strategy would have produced a sustainable cash cow that Ladbrokes could still be milking. Psychopaths do not do strategic thinking...
The same template exists for online poker. It was blindingly obvious that the South Sea bubble-like rise of the shoddy online poker platforms was a spectacular society corruption of the first degree. Of course, New Labour avoided any regulation and mugs were fleeced with impunity. Once again, a sustainable strategy was replaced by a thirst for a quick rake off and it is an outrage that the resultant state of the online poker sector leads to the more reliable platforms now marketing their integrity rather than any gaming experience!
Ladbrokes wish to replicate the environment of their LBO's in casinos and it is a rare regulatory success that they are now prevented from doing so. The Magic Sign are able to fleece the leisure punter to a far greater extent in these controlled environments. For example, bookmakers are able to massage profits by the utilisation of disinformation which engenders a foolish betting strategy in the punter with the outcome that his/her monies devalue at a rate. In an LBO, the actual return on a pound supposedly randomly bet is worse than if it is truly randomly bet! Additionally, we would be curious to see what changes Ladbrokes have made to the software of their LBO gaming machines to create a 25% increase in gross...
The Ladbrokes share price has done the downhill from 462.50 to 270.75 over the last year (a fall of 41%). Looking more closely, one may see that 39% of this decline has happened due to the impacts of the Gambling Act and the new governmental attitude to casinos. Shame. The most entertaining aspect to the annual reports of bookmaking organisations is that their targets for growth are always worded in a manner which describes the behavioural culture of the organisation. So, when Ladbrokes chief executive, Chris Bell, suggests that the new focus for profit is football and that Ladbrokes intend to "target young gamblers", one must respect their chutzpah.
Of course, the corruption of English football is something well known in Harrow and one is able to understand that, to Ladbrokes, an illegal and highly liquid global betting market is preferable to the 2:15 at Lingfield any day of the week.
And, it is Manchester that has born the brunt of the Premier League's enlightened attitude to a fit-and-proper-person's test with regard to club ownership. Firstly, we had the Glazer's and all supporters of FC United of Manchester must be smiling at how much of Manchester United's pre-tax profits of £59.6 million are simply to be handed over to the bankers who loaned the Glazer's the money to take over the club in the first place. Robbery. So, while Manchester United was a project to determine the efficacy of a leading football club being run directly by American banks, Manchester City was the testing ground for the impact of a club being run by a gangster.
Thaksin Shinawatra is running Manchester City FC for one reason only - to utilise the club as a publicity vehicle in his native Thailand. We stated this from day one but numerous recent incidents have strengthened our case. Matches between Man City Reserves and Thailand on the morning of Premiership games, Man City's loan signings of three sub-standard Thai international footballers, Shinawatra's offer to pay the wages for a foreign coach for the Thai national team etc etc are indicative of this focus. If Shinawatra is able, in some small way, to use the lever of publicity that is Manchester City to enhance the chances of the People's Power Party (PPP) - the reconstituted Thai Rak Thai party of Shinawatra - being elected to government, the club will eventually have served their purpose and the investment will cease to be primary. It might even cease altogether... At the moment, the Thai military and the PPP are in deadlock as Shinawatra's lot, true to firm, were involved in intensive rigging in some of "their" areas in North East Thailand. Rose-tinted City fans should note that none of Shinawatra's projects are focused on medium or longer term strategies in the city of Manchester. The players can be sold, the manager sacked and the smiling assassin can return home having bought an election both cheaply and, one has to say, pretty creatively. And, he'll have dumped on City - I'm resisting the urge to start liking the man here!
Shinawatra is simply a Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) for the English Football industry - he brings capital, corruption (AirAsia sponsoring the Premiership referees), market expertise (Thailand "ran" the Asian betting markets for a number of years) and creative strategy. In this manner, the Asian SWF's will always outperform their western equivalents in the hedge funds and the private equity sector.
As Blair sails off into the sunset (for now) with the bonus of £500,000 a year to provide inside information or, in their language, "strategic advice" to JP Morgan (surely all heads of government should be banned from sitting on the boards of business not for 1 year, not for 5, not for 10... But forever. Otherwise business and government end up in the non-democratic embrace in which we find them today), we are left with a rotten system, a part of which is the British gambling sector. Brown has dragged this sector back from the cowboy territory of Blair and Jowell, but only to a minor degree. It is undoubtedly harder for gambling organisations to buy influence in Brownworld compared to Blair's Thatcherite psycholand but there are still going to be 16 casinos and Manchester will have one of them. Bookmakers are still able to corrupt any sport they choose without suffering the consequences of anything so awkward as official oversight. Most televised sport is now fixed. Incremental adjustments to an antisocial gambling sector are not enough. The whole industry requires proper intrusive regulation immediately.
Of course, things were never like they used to be but it surely used to be better than this...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
