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A bookmaker, or bookie, is an organization or a person that takes bets on sporting and other events at agreed upon odds.
Bookmaking is generally illegal in the United States, with Nevada being a notable exception. In 2009, one of the co-founders of BetOnline was arrested on bookmaking charges.
In some countries, such as Singapore, Sweden, Canada, Hong Kong and Japan, the only legal bookmaker is state-owned and operated. In Canada, this is part of the lottery program and is known as Sport Select.
In the United Kingdom, trusted legal bookmakers are members of IBAS, which is an industry standard organization which resolves to settle disputes.
In 1961, Harold Macmillan's Conservative Government legalised betting shops and tough measures were enacted to ensure that bookmakers remained honest. A large and respectable industry has grown since. At one time there were over 15,000 betting shops in the UK. Now, through consolidation, they have been reduced to about 8,500. Currently there are four major "high street" bookmakers in the United Kingdom: William Hill (Market Leader), Ladbrokes, Coral, and state-owned ToteSport, with Sky Bet, Bet24, Betfred, Victor Chandler, Stan James, Sportingbet, Mansion and Bet365, rapidly emerging, in terms of turnover and event sponsorship.
Increasingly, online bettors are turning to the use of betting exchanges such as Betfair and BETDAQ, which automatically match Back and Lay bets between different bettors, thus effectively cutting out the bookmaker's traditional profit margin also called an overround.
These online exchange markets operate a market index of prices near but usually not at 100% competitiveness as exchanges take commissions on winnings. True wholesale odds are odds that operate at 100% of probabilistic outcomes.
Betting exchanges compete with the traditional bookmaker. Not only are they generally able to offer punters better odds due to their much lower overheads, but also in giving opportunities for arbitrage: the practice of taking advantage of a price differential between two or more markets, although traditionally arbitrage has always been possible by backing all outcomes with bookmakers (dutching) as opposed to laying an outcome on an exchange. Exchanges do, however, allow bookmakers to see the state of the market and can set their odds accordingly.
Some bookmakers have even taken to using betting exchanges as a way of laying off unfavorable bets and thus reducing their overall exposure. This has led insecurity from some TABs in Australia, state-run betting agencies which attempted to deny Betfair an Australian license by running unfavorable ads in the media regarding the company. When Tasmania granted Betfair a license despite these efforts the Western Australian state legislature passed a law that specifically criminalised using betting exchanges from within the state, however that law was later ruled to be unconstitutional.
Bets are also taken via phones, using SMS text messages, though poker and other sports are more suited to other mediums. As technology moves on, the gambling world ensures it is a major player in new technology operations.
Most televised sports in the United Kingdom and Europe are now sponsored wholly or partly by Internet and high street bookmakers, with sometimes several bookmakers and online casinos being displayed on players' shirts, advertising hoardings, stadium signs and competition event titles, although Werder Bremen are currently fighting the German courts for the freedom to continue featuring bookmaker Bwin on their shirts, as Germany and France take action against online gamers.
With the recent banning of tobacco sponsorship, and the significant commercial budgets available to the gaming industry, sponsorship by car manufacturers, alcoholic drinks, soft drinks and fast food marketers is being rapidly replaced by sponsorship by gaming companies in the Far East and Europe.
The United Kingdom Gambling Act 2005 introduces a new regulatory system for governing gambling in Great Britain. This system includes new provisions for regulating the advertising of gambling products. These provisions of the Act came into effect in September 2007. It is an offence to advertise in the UK, gambling which physically takes place in a non-European Economic Area (EEA), or in the case of gambling by remote means, gambling which is not regulated by the gambling laws of an EEA state.
The situation is more confused in the United States, which has attempted to restrict operators of foreign gambling websites accessing their domestic market. This has resulted in a ruling against the US Government by the WTO.
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
