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Titans Shake Up Gambling World Down Under
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06-Oct-2008, 03:04
Tuesday, Australia’s Gold Coast Titans Rugby League Club launched a new gambling site in collaboration with Northern Territory firm Betezy. The site, which began taking bets with the National Rugby League’s grand final last week, will specialize primarily in online sports betting.
Titans officials said the club will split profits from the site 50/50 with Betezy. Betezy, they said, is run- ning, staffing and maintaining the site, and framing the betting markets, while the Titans provide a popular brand to draw in sports enthusiasts as well as diehard punters.
Part of the site’s expected revenue will offset the cost of the Titans Rugby League. Another portion will go to the team’s charity arm, The Gold Coast Titans Community Foundation. According to Titans managing director Michael Searle, the money will do quite a bit to defray losses from club expenses.
With $4 billion expected to turn over in Northern Territory betting agencies this fiscal year, these funds are certain to have a positive impact on the Titans, who until recently, had no hand in the punting cookie jar. According to business projections, the club stands to make an estimated $1 million per year.
“Unlike other clubs, we don’t rely on money from poker machines, and I believe this is an opportunity to get a foothold into the growing gambling market within Australia for the benefit of rugby league,” Searle said. “At last, rugby league clubs are getting their entitlements to what’s a burgeoning industry that traditionally we haven’t been getting revenue from.”
Searle went on to comment, “It is different from the poker-machine model that some league clubs run, but I think it is the way of the future.
“We take the view that rugby-league fans usually enjoy a punt and a beer, and this provides them with a platform that they can deal with a corporate bookmaker.”
The NRL has agreed to the Titans’ site with reservations, stipulating that the Titans maintain strict integrity safeguards and that they only receive proceeds from the site on a monthly, turnover basis—rather than based on a profit-to-loss ratio.
The organization also required that the club remain entirely independent from the bookmaking agency. This is the surest way, it argued, to guarantee the club has no interest in outcomes and scores, thus undermining the possibility of purposely thrown matches.
Still, the NRL’s blessing of the Titans’ site has sparked controversy because the organization recently blocked the Manly squad from signing a similar deal with online bookmaker Betchoice. Detractors say the reason for the NRL’s obstruction in the Manly case was that Betchoice is a major rival to league sponsor TABSportsbet. They cite the fact that the NRL receives 5 percent of TAB’s proceeds from rugby-league betting as the main reason for the Manly meltdown.
NRL boss David Gallup defended the organization’s position, saying, “While we accept that sports betting is a reality and that clubs are looking to build new revenue streams, we will retain the right to examine each proposal on a case-by-case basis.”