Well, how many of us keep an actual logbook of the exact time of each bet? Fortunately, I had deposited money into my account to fund the bet, and I could pretty much pinpoint the time of the wager by the time of the deposit into my account.
They (Centrebet) said they had phone records of all bets and within a day the correct funds were in my account,.....afterwards, no emails to me like "sorry", or anything like that, as is the way of many Aussie books. And because it was a nominally large amount, they then limited me and then banned me from betting anything over 50 bucks. Lovely, no?
But, to look at it another way, what if my bet had gone to an unregulated book? Chances are I never would have received my money and the more likely answer would have been,
"Sorry, (when they weren't really sorry at all) but we have no record of that bet ever being placed."
https://www.onlinebetting.com/fade-the-public/
As we have seen in retail in the USA, where the superstores like Walmart dominate because they offer superior pricing or Amazone, there will come a time when this happens in the legal betting market. The British bookmakers who have a habit of being extremely terrible at customer service, giving terrible pricing and limiting winning bettors will go by the wayside, beaten by books that are good at customer service and offer less vigorish, similar to what pinnacle is.
I predict in the future that exchanges will dominate that operate just like a stock exchange, as they can offer less of a commission to place a bet. Those cooperate bigwigs that are operating a site will see that they have no inherent risk in an exchange as there can be no uneven action on a game, for every 50,000 dollars bet on one side, there must be 50,000 dollars bet on the opposite side for a bet to take place. Matchbook is an example where this works well and the commission is 2%, each way.
The only risk is this not happening is this,......if the bookmakers get into the decision makers pockets and make them resistant to making it a free market, then competition will be stifled and like all monopolies, the public will not get the best pricing. I live in a country where at one time the government half owned the one and only national telephone company. Calling overseas cost $1.00/minute. Competition in the form of other privately owned telcos were eventually brought in, and guess what? Calls to overseas within 20 years dropped to 10% of what they once were. Right now, there is really only one cable/satellite television option here, and of course we pay more here for satellite television than any country in the world.
I would hope that decision makers have consulted actual bettors to get their concerns about the negative tactics bookmakers have attempted in the past, though maybe that is pie in the sky thinking. One can only hope.
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