As of the end of 2018, six legislators in five states had pre-filed sports betting bills. Those bills run the gamut, with tax rates on gross revenue as low as 6.25 percent and as high as 25 percent. In Missouri, two bills call for an additional fee above taxes – in one case, that money would be used to maintain and build new sporting venues, and in another, it would be a payoff to the professional sports leagues and the NCAA.
In either case, the sponsors of the bills are sure to get pushback from operators, and other lawmakers who represent those operators’ interests.
Besides those five, lawmakers in about 15 other states, from New York to Montana, have promised to file bills. In Montana and North Dakota, those lawmakers are already having legislation drafted.
What appears to be becoming a theme among states that want to legalize sports betting is a nod toward mobile/internet betting. Among the lawmakers who pre-filed bills, two said they don’t want casinos dotting their states’ landscape, they’d prefer that sports betting take place on phones or computers. Conceptually, this idea would also save money – neither Tennessee nor Virginia have a network of casinos or racetracks in place.
Montana lawmakers, who plan to file and pass bills during their 90-day session, don’t want casinos, either.
“My vision is more of a free market, where you don’t need to go to a kiosk to deposit money or place a bet,” Representative Kenneth Bogner (D-District 19) told US Bets. “It’s more about doing it on your phone or at your desktop computer.”
In Michigan, which has three commercial casinos in Detroit and tribal casinos scattered throughout the state, Representative Brandt Iden (R-District 61) just got his internet/mobile gaming bill through the state legislature. The bill requires the governor’s signature, but lays the groundwork for mobile sports betting in one of the country’s most populous state.
State legislatures across the country open their 2019 sessions as early as Jan. 3. After a pre-filing frenzy in November and December, expect sports betting to be in the news across the country. And before things get really crazy, here’s a look at bills that have already been filed.
Kentucky: The first state in which a bill was pre-filed, Senator Julian Carroll refiled and updated a bill he put before his colleagues during the 2018 session. This bill calls for a 25 percent tax on net revenue. The bill would create the Kentucky Gaming Association to oversee sports betting. Carroll’s bill likely won’t get to a vote, but he’s not the only Kentucky lawmaker pushing for sports betting. Representative Adam Koenig held a comprehensive hearing in the fall and promises to file his own bill. Expect that one to have a more reasonable tax rate.
Tennessee: Though Tennessee took little action on sports betting in 2018, Representative Rick Staples’ (D-District 15) HB 0001 covers a lot of key points needed in sports betting legislation. The bill outlines a 10 percent tax rate on adjusted gross revenue, state-wide mobile/internet betting, and the creating of the Tennessee Gaming Commission. What’s unique about the bill is that it calls for sports betting to be legalized “only in jurisdictions that approve sports betting by local option election.” This would seem to mean that should the bill become law, sports betting wouldn’t be statewide, but county by county. It’s not completely unprecedented to put the decision in the hands of local voters — a Nov. 6 Louisiana ballot measure allowed voters to determine, parish by parish, if daily fantasy sports should be legalized.
Missouri: Within days of each other and at the start of the pre-filing period, two Show-Me State lawmakers filed comprehensive sports betting bills. But they’re at odds with each other, and there’s no telling how many other bills might be filed. Senator Denny Hoskins (D-District 21) was the first to file doing so Dec. 1, and his bill, which calls for a 14 percent tax and state-wide mobile/online sports betting, is the most unique filed to date. Throughout 2018, the professional sports leagues lobbied for a fee – an “integrity fee” or a royalty, depending on who was asking and when – but it didn’t fly anywhere.
Hoskins decided to turn the idea on its head and write a ½ of 1 percent fee into his bill – but rather than go to the pro leagues, it would go back to Missouri through a fund that would be used to upgrade, maintain and build sports facilities. The state is still saddled with debt for the Dome at America’s Center (formerly the Edward Jones Dome) two years after the NFL Rams left for Los Angeles, and finding a solution for how to use that property is of paramount importance.
In the House, Representative Cody Smith (R-District 163) filed his own bill 10 days later and he wrote in the full 1 percent “royalty,” to be paid to the professional leagues and the NCAA. Smith’s bill has the lowest tax rate – 6.25 percent – of any legal or proposed law, and effectively mandates that sportsbooks buy “official league data” and limits mobile/internet sports betting to on-site sportsbook premises.
Virginia: Delegate Mark Sickles (D-District 43) prefiled HB 1638 in November and he’s already aware that he’ll have to make changes the bill going forward. Sickles’ bill calls for a 15 percent tax rate, a $250,000 application fee and limits the number of sports betting licenses to five. He told Sports Handle that will be the first change – he’ll up the number of licenses to 10 after hearing from stakeholders. But he’s also cognizant of the fact that his is the first sports betting bill in a state with no casino infrastructure, so there is still much work to be done. Sickles’ bill would allow for state-wide mobile/internet betting, and he’d prefer that to building casinos across his state.
Senator Chapman Petersen (D-District 34) has also been promising a sports betting bill, but hasn’t filed to date.
South Carolina: The least developed of all the bills filed, South Carolina’s primary sports betting bill, S 57, sponsored by Gerald Malloy, seeks to amend the state constitution to allow sports betting and casino gaming, and the issue would go to the state’s voters on the 2020 ballot. S 71, which would create a sports betting study committee, is the one more likely to get legs in 2019, with passable legislation coming in 2020.
December 31, 2018
December 24, 2018
For Farage and Brexit Pollster, a World of Gamblers and Gambling
Behind the luxury hotels lining London’s Park Lane, just across from a service entrance, Nigel Farage stood outside a squat office building streaked with soot. Britain’s famous anti-European Union campaigner was flanked by a couple of minor sports celebrities and two young women in matching dresses who held up a blue ribbon. Farage lifted a pair of scissors and paused with a smile, mouth agape, his face frozen for the cameras in a silent chortle.
It was Sept. 29, 2016, three months after the U.K.’s shock vote to exit the EU, and Farage was the guest of honor at the opening of a small bookmaking shop owned by a man who calls himself “the most exclusive private bookmaker in the world.” Ben Keith and his operation, Star Sports, specialize in high-end, high-profile clients. Keith, a diehard Farage supporter, was in the picture too, next to his idol.
Gambling is legal in the U.K., even corporatized, but most politicians aren’t elbowing each other out of the way to help open betting shops. Farage is different. Throughout his professional and political lives, he has surrounded himself with men who make or take wagers, big and small, on everything from dog races to elections. They have played leading roles in promoting or financing Farage’s ascent in the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP), the rise of his party to the center of the British political agenda, and his campaign to leave the EU, which has thrown the nation into a political crisis.
At least two advisers who were with Farage on the day of the Brexit vote were betting or trading on the collapse of the British pound—fortuitous positions, given how badly the rest of the world got it wrong. The surprise vote sparked the largest crash of any major currency in modern history. Their positions may have benefited from Farage’s actions, as premature concessions he made before the votes were tallied that night helped drive the pound to its highest mark all year, just hours before it plummeted. The false sentiment made bets against the British currency cheaper and more lucrative.
Some hedge funds, which made small fortunes in a matter of hours betting the same way as Farage’s pals, had a good idea the concessions were misleading because they’d hired Britain’s best-known polling firms to provide near hour-by-hour voting data, via secret exit polls, according to a Bloomberg investigation published in June. Farage has said he had access to the results of one such poll that night, run by his party’s polling firm, Survation, which showed Leave had won.
Farage has denied having any personal financial interest in the vote, aside from a £1,000-bet he made at a professional bookmaker for campaign publicity. He also has said he did not intentionally drive the pound up ahead of the crash. Farage, who called Prime Minister Theresa May's negotiated agreement with Brussels “the worst deal in history,” has publicly spoken of late about a possible return to the front-line of British politics. He didn't respond to detailed requests to comment for this article, though he viewed them and shared some of their contents with associates.
In addition to the world of supporters around Farage regularly making or taking big bets, add one more gambler he was in touch with that night: Damian Lyons Lowe, the owner of Survation. He also was a key political operative and adviser to Farage as well as the man who, according to Farage, tipped him about the private hedge fund poll. Lyons Lowe declined to comment for this story, but in an interview with the Financial Times in June, he denied giving Farage specific data from that poll.
Six sources familiar with Lyons Lowe’s betting record say he has a history of gambling on politics—in the very contests in which he’s polling.
The timely betting by Farage's inner circle around the crucial election raises new questions amid concerns from lawmakers and regulators about whether private polling is undermining the integrity of the country's markets and its democracy.
Farage discovered the thrill of risking his money as a teenager at Dulwich College, an exclusive private boys school in South London, where he founded an investment society, buying and selling company shares through his father, a stock broker, according to Farage’s 2010 memoir, Fighting Bull. After leaving school at 18, he joined a firm on the London Metal Exchange, a centuries-old marketplace for trading commodities and associated derivatives. Farage went on to work for units of Drexel Burnham Lambert and Credit Lyonnais.
As Farage told Bloomberg in an April interview and recounted in Fighting Bull, he spent quiet work days in the 1990s at the pub with fellow traders, drinking and “spread betting on just about everything.” Spread betting, also legal in the U.K., is a form of gambling that can mirror trading in financial markets, though the participants have no money at stake on financial instruments themselves. Instead, they simply bet on the prices of those instruments, or even a price “spread,” such as the range a stock price might land in on a given day. Spread betting is treated as gambling in the U.K. and, as such, winnings are not taxed. By contrast, investment earnings are subject to taxation, creating some of the appeal for wagering on markets through spread-betting firms.
Farage was first elected UKIP leader in 2006, and one of his first major donors was Alan Bown, a retired bookmaker from Kent who has given the party nearly £2 million, records show. “He wore houndstooth jackets so often that anybody spotting him from 100 yards would have known he could only have been a bookie,” Farage wrote of Bown in the Telegraph newspaper in 2017.
In 2013, Bown also commissioned surveys for UKIP that were carried out by Lyons Lowe and Survation. Bown attracted controversy in 2014 when leaked emails showed him appealing to UKIP representatives in Brussels to divert EU cash to the party’s coffers.
Stuart Wheeler, a former banker who founded Britain's largest spread-betting firm, IG Group, also was an early major backer of Farage, having jumped over from the Conservative Party, which kicked him out in 2009 after he donated £100,000 to UKIP. Wheeler made his UKIP contributions, which have totalled almost £1 million to date, because of his anger over the nation’s EU membership.
Wheeler was appointed UKIP treasurer in 2011, and later contributed at least 400,000 pounds to pro-Brexit campaigners. (He also is the uncle of Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait, who wasn't involved in the editing of this story.)
Farage quietly kept his own hand in spread betting and markets even after he became an elected member of the European Parliament. In 2003, he set up Farage Ltd. with his brother Andrew, with Nigel using an offshore trust to control his shares. The firm profited by hundreds of thousands of pounds through betting on the price of various metals. It then collapsed into bankruptcy in 2015. (Nigel resigned as a director in 2011.) Records show the firms’ liquidators discovered that there were £124,337 of unlawful dividends, withdrawn by Andrew Farage, who was himself declared bankrupt in May 2016. Andrew Farage disputed the amount, but never provided evidence to the contrary, according to the liquidators.
Nigel Farage also worked in a customer-facing role at London-based ACM Group, a trading platform that specializes in spread betting and currencies, according to regulatory records, which show him in that post until November 2008, two years after he took over as UKIP’s leader. (The firm didn’t respond to requests for comment.)
After Bloomberg’s investigation was published, Farage denied that he had any personal financial incentive to push the British pound higher through his premature, and ultimately wrong, concessions on the night of the Brexit vote. He said they were motivated by pessimism about the outcome, though he specifically told one interviewer on the night that his concessions were based on “a calm and rational feeling” and were informed by “what I know from some of my friends in the financial markets who have done some big polling.”
In his interview with Bloomberg, Farage relished his role in driving the pound higher ahead of its record collapse, and in June a photograph surfaced, apparently posted on Facebook, showing him grinning and pointing to a television screen bearing a chart with the collapsing pound. It was dated June 24, 2016, and showed the time as 3.35 a.m., when markets were in a steep decline because of the voting results. “I was laughing that all the experts had got it wrong,” Farage explained to the BBC in July.
A different photo from the night of the referendum shows Farage side-by-side at a small private party with Hermann Kelly, one of his closest political aides. They’re posing in a selfie posted on Twitter at 10:06 p.m.—hours before the results came in. It’s around the time Farage knew about Survation’s hedge fund poll, he told Bloomberg in April. “We have all changed the directn [sic] of Europe. We shook up the world! So proud to have done my part with @Nigel_Farage,” said the tweet from Kelly, director of communications for an umbrella group of far-right European political parties that was controlled by Farage and UKIP.
What Kelly didn’t tell the world that night via social media was that he was betting on foreign exchange markets, according to one person present, and an account Kelly later gave the author and British political journalist Tim Shipman, who said Kelly earned £9,500 off his Brexit trading when so many market professionals around the world got it wrong. In addition, a document seen by Bloomberg shows Kelly had opened an account for his trading across the Atlantic—in Chicago—at R.J. O’Brien & Associates, which billed itself as one of the world’s largest derivatives and foreign-exchange brokers. He wired $81,000 to the account from his bank in Brussels on Aug. 14, 2015—the same time panic-stricken Leave campaigners believed, incorrectly, that the U.K. government was about to call the referendum.
Kelly declined to comment for this article.
Another close Farage associate, who also was with him on the night of the referendum, was watching how financial and betting markets were responding to the day’s events. George Cottrell was a young UKIP activist who ran Farage’s private office. In a July 2017 interview with the Daily Telegraph he boasted that he’d made a “six-figure sum” during the evening of June 23 and early hours of June 24. “At 10pm, I couldn’t believe I was still getting 9/1 [odds for a majority leave vote],” he told the newspaper.
“We were in our campaign office and I was tracking all the major stock indices, the dollar and pound currency markets,” Cottrell said, according to the Telegraph. “When it got to 3 a.m., I was getting my managers out of bed to get me another 50 grand on here, another 50 grand there, to short sterling.” Cottrell, the son of a British aristocrat, said he lost most of his winnings betting on a horse the next day.
Cottrell happened to be with Farage in Chicago in August 2016, during a visit to the U.S. for the Republican Convention, when Cottrell was arrested and charged with money-laundering offenses. Federal prosecutors said Cottrell had offered, via the dark web, to launder money for undercover agents posing as drug traffickers. He pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud and served eight months. Cottrell didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Farage, who also appeared in advertisements for the Paddy Power bookmaking group, attended some Star Sports corporate events and was friends with its owner, Keith, according to a former employee. Keith was one of the bookmakers offering odds on Britain voting to leave the EU in June 2016. On June 8, the bookmaker posted on Twitter that it had taken individual bets of up to 4,000 pounds on Leave at odds of 11/4. Later the same day, responding to a comment on the social media site, the account posted: “No one wants #Brexit more than Ben Keith!”
In internal Star Sports emails seen by Bloomberg, Farage was described as one of Keith’s “chosen few” advisers for events the firm was taking bets on. Keith has been praising Farage and attacking the EU on the Star Sports website since 2013, when he called on the U.K. to stop “pissing away billions into the bottomless-drain, which is the EU.” After the election, Keith drew a comparison between Farage and Mahatma Gandhi, and later called for Farage to become the U.K.’s prime minister.
Keith told Bloomberg he’s friends with Farage, but that the politician had no formal role at Star Sports and did not give him bookmaking advice. Farage attended events, including Keith’s birthday party, in a personal capacity, Keith said, adding that they didn’t know each other until after the 2016 referendum.
Lyons Lowe, the pollster for Farage’s UKIP and his pro-Brexit group, began conducting polls as a sideline during the late 2000s—while he was still doing different work for banks in the City of London. Gambling was at the heart of his new hobby. Lyons Lowe conducted online surveys and also ran a website with others called “Special Bets.” That’s the name bookmakers give to unconventional wagers—basically, all wagering other than sports.
He started Survation in 2010. The firm’s profile grew as it began publishing polls in British media outlets showing increasing support for Farage’s UKIP, which then hired Survation to carry out research, becoming a top client.
Lyons Lowe continued to gamble as Survation’s prominence rose in politics, wagering tens of thousands of dollars on elections in which he was conducting public surveys, according to six different sources with knowledge of his wagers. He bet on special elections to fill vacant parliamentary seats, which are called by-elections in the U.K., on at least one market-moving referendum, and on general elections, those individuals said. Most notably, he wagered thousands of pounds on the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, and the 2015 U.K. general election.
In what would become a trial run of sorts for Brexit, Survation secretly carried out private polling around the Scottish independence vote for top money managers, including Nomura Securities and Brevan Howard, Bloomberg has reported. Lyons Lowe placed at least five separate wagers around the 2015 general election over eight days totaling almost £20,000 with Betfair and IG Group, according to two sources with detailed information about these bets. Betfair is a betting exchange that offers odds on political events.
The U.K. has no laws preventing anyone from gambling on political contests, even if they’re participating in them. But some polling firms, including others involved in hedge-fund polls for Brexit, bar staff from wagering on political events in which they’re conducting polls that are released to the general public.
In a statement emailed to Bloomberg, Survation said it was proud of its record: “The provision of accurate insight and prediction services is the primary business activity of Survation and the company will continue to abide by all rules and regulations that relate to our activities.” The Market Research Society maintains a code of conduct that says pollsters should always “protect the reputation and integrity of the profession.” Jane Frost, CEO of the group, said in an emailed statement that it was the business of each firm to manage its own policy on gambling.
Based on Bloomberg’s investigation of Brexit polling, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority said in October that it is examining the secret relationships between pollsters and hedge funds. The FCA, which is the U.K.’s financial prosecutor and regulator, is specifically looking at whether such arrangements could violate laws or regulations against market abuse and insider dealing, or whether loopholes need to be closed, officials have said. Financial firms from Europe, the U.S. and Asia were all involved.
According to current and former officials familiar with the FCA’s inquiry, the main concerns are likely to center on two types of market-moving, non-public information that pollsters sold to hedge funds—data that revealed the contents of market-moving polls before they were made public, and exit-polling data that it would have been illegal for pollsters to share with the public.
Those concerns remain as the country faces the prospect of another Brexit-driven vote, be it a general election or a second referendum.
It was Sept. 29, 2016, three months after the U.K.’s shock vote to exit the EU, and Farage was the guest of honor at the opening of a small bookmaking shop owned by a man who calls himself “the most exclusive private bookmaker in the world.” Ben Keith and his operation, Star Sports, specialize in high-end, high-profile clients. Keith, a diehard Farage supporter, was in the picture too, next to his idol.
Gambling is legal in the U.K., even corporatized, but most politicians aren’t elbowing each other out of the way to help open betting shops. Farage is different. Throughout his professional and political lives, he has surrounded himself with men who make or take wagers, big and small, on everything from dog races to elections. They have played leading roles in promoting or financing Farage’s ascent in the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP), the rise of his party to the center of the British political agenda, and his campaign to leave the EU, which has thrown the nation into a political crisis.
At least two advisers who were with Farage on the day of the Brexit vote were betting or trading on the collapse of the British pound—fortuitous positions, given how badly the rest of the world got it wrong. The surprise vote sparked the largest crash of any major currency in modern history. Their positions may have benefited from Farage’s actions, as premature concessions he made before the votes were tallied that night helped drive the pound to its highest mark all year, just hours before it plummeted. The false sentiment made bets against the British currency cheaper and more lucrative.
Farage has denied having any personal financial interest in the vote, aside from a £1,000-bet he made at a professional bookmaker for campaign publicity. He also has said he did not intentionally drive the pound up ahead of the crash. Farage, who called Prime Minister Theresa May's negotiated agreement with Brussels “the worst deal in history,” has publicly spoken of late about a possible return to the front-line of British politics. He didn't respond to detailed requests to comment for this article, though he viewed them and shared some of their contents with associates.
In addition to the world of supporters around Farage regularly making or taking big bets, add one more gambler he was in touch with that night: Damian Lyons Lowe, the owner of Survation. He also was a key political operative and adviser to Farage as well as the man who, according to Farage, tipped him about the private hedge fund poll. Lyons Lowe declined to comment for this story, but in an interview with the Financial Times in June, he denied giving Farage specific data from that poll.
Six sources familiar with Lyons Lowe’s betting record say he has a history of gambling on politics—in the very contests in which he’s polling.
The timely betting by Farage's inner circle around the crucial election raises new questions amid concerns from lawmakers and regulators about whether private polling is undermining the integrity of the country's markets and its democracy.
Farage discovered the thrill of risking his money as a teenager at Dulwich College, an exclusive private boys school in South London, where he founded an investment society, buying and selling company shares through his father, a stock broker, according to Farage’s 2010 memoir, Fighting Bull. After leaving school at 18, he joined a firm on the London Metal Exchange, a centuries-old marketplace for trading commodities and associated derivatives. Farage went on to work for units of Drexel Burnham Lambert and Credit Lyonnais.
As Farage told Bloomberg in an April interview and recounted in Fighting Bull, he spent quiet work days in the 1990s at the pub with fellow traders, drinking and “spread betting on just about everything.” Spread betting, also legal in the U.K., is a form of gambling that can mirror trading in financial markets, though the participants have no money at stake on financial instruments themselves. Instead, they simply bet on the prices of those instruments, or even a price “spread,” such as the range a stock price might land in on a given day. Spread betting is treated as gambling in the U.K. and, as such, winnings are not taxed. By contrast, investment earnings are subject to taxation, creating some of the appeal for wagering on markets through spread-betting firms.
Farage was first elected UKIP leader in 2006, and one of his first major donors was Alan Bown, a retired bookmaker from Kent who has given the party nearly £2 million, records show. “He wore houndstooth jackets so often that anybody spotting him from 100 yards would have known he could only have been a bookie,” Farage wrote of Bown in the Telegraph newspaper in 2017.
In 2013, Bown also commissioned surveys for UKIP that were carried out by Lyons Lowe and Survation. Bown attracted controversy in 2014 when leaked emails showed him appealing to UKIP representatives in Brussels to divert EU cash to the party’s coffers.
Stuart Wheeler, a former banker who founded Britain's largest spread-betting firm, IG Group, also was an early major backer of Farage, having jumped over from the Conservative Party, which kicked him out in 2009 after he donated £100,000 to UKIP. Wheeler made his UKIP contributions, which have totalled almost £1 million to date, because of his anger over the nation’s EU membership.
Wheeler was appointed UKIP treasurer in 2011, and later contributed at least 400,000 pounds to pro-Brexit campaigners. (He also is the uncle of Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait, who wasn't involved in the editing of this story.)
Farage quietly kept his own hand in spread betting and markets even after he became an elected member of the European Parliament. In 2003, he set up Farage Ltd. with his brother Andrew, with Nigel using an offshore trust to control his shares. The firm profited by hundreds of thousands of pounds through betting on the price of various metals. It then collapsed into bankruptcy in 2015. (Nigel resigned as a director in 2011.) Records show the firms’ liquidators discovered that there were £124,337 of unlawful dividends, withdrawn by Andrew Farage, who was himself declared bankrupt in May 2016. Andrew Farage disputed the amount, but never provided evidence to the contrary, according to the liquidators.
Nigel Farage also worked in a customer-facing role at London-based ACM Group, a trading platform that specializes in spread betting and currencies, according to regulatory records, which show him in that post until November 2008, two years after he took over as UKIP’s leader. (The firm didn’t respond to requests for comment.)
After Bloomberg’s investigation was published, Farage denied that he had any personal financial incentive to push the British pound higher through his premature, and ultimately wrong, concessions on the night of the Brexit vote. He said they were motivated by pessimism about the outcome, though he specifically told one interviewer on the night that his concessions were based on “a calm and rational feeling” and were informed by “what I know from some of my friends in the financial markets who have done some big polling.”
In his interview with Bloomberg, Farage relished his role in driving the pound higher ahead of its record collapse, and in June a photograph surfaced, apparently posted on Facebook, showing him grinning and pointing to a television screen bearing a chart with the collapsing pound. It was dated June 24, 2016, and showed the time as 3.35 a.m., when markets were in a steep decline because of the voting results. “I was laughing that all the experts had got it wrong,” Farage explained to the BBC in July.
A different photo from the night of the referendum shows Farage side-by-side at a small private party with Hermann Kelly, one of his closest political aides. They’re posing in a selfie posted on Twitter at 10:06 p.m.—hours before the results came in. It’s around the time Farage knew about Survation’s hedge fund poll, he told Bloomberg in April. “We have all changed the directn [sic] of Europe. We shook up the world! So proud to have done my part with @Nigel_Farage,” said the tweet from Kelly, director of communications for an umbrella group of far-right European political parties that was controlled by Farage and UKIP.
What Kelly didn’t tell the world that night via social media was that he was betting on foreign exchange markets, according to one person present, and an account Kelly later gave the author and British political journalist Tim Shipman, who said Kelly earned £9,500 off his Brexit trading when so many market professionals around the world got it wrong. In addition, a document seen by Bloomberg shows Kelly had opened an account for his trading across the Atlantic—in Chicago—at R.J. O’Brien & Associates, which billed itself as one of the world’s largest derivatives and foreign-exchange brokers. He wired $81,000 to the account from his bank in Brussels on Aug. 14, 2015—the same time panic-stricken Leave campaigners believed, incorrectly, that the U.K. government was about to call the referendum.
Kelly declined to comment for this article.
Another close Farage associate, who also was with him on the night of the referendum, was watching how financial and betting markets were responding to the day’s events. George Cottrell was a young UKIP activist who ran Farage’s private office. In a July 2017 interview with the Daily Telegraph he boasted that he’d made a “six-figure sum” during the evening of June 23 and early hours of June 24. “At 10pm, I couldn’t believe I was still getting 9/1 [odds for a majority leave vote],” he told the newspaper.
“We were in our campaign office and I was tracking all the major stock indices, the dollar and pound currency markets,” Cottrell said, according to the Telegraph. “When it got to 3 a.m., I was getting my managers out of bed to get me another 50 grand on here, another 50 grand there, to short sterling.” Cottrell, the son of a British aristocrat, said he lost most of his winnings betting on a horse the next day.
Cottrell happened to be with Farage in Chicago in August 2016, during a visit to the U.S. for the Republican Convention, when Cottrell was arrested and charged with money-laundering offenses. Federal prosecutors said Cottrell had offered, via the dark web, to launder money for undercover agents posing as drug traffickers. He pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud and served eight months. Cottrell didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Farage, who also appeared in advertisements for the Paddy Power bookmaking group, attended some Star Sports corporate events and was friends with its owner, Keith, according to a former employee. Keith was one of the bookmakers offering odds on Britain voting to leave the EU in June 2016. On June 8, the bookmaker posted on Twitter that it had taken individual bets of up to 4,000 pounds on Leave at odds of 11/4. Later the same day, responding to a comment on the social media site, the account posted: “No one wants #Brexit more than Ben Keith!”
In internal Star Sports emails seen by Bloomberg, Farage was described as one of Keith’s “chosen few” advisers for events the firm was taking bets on. Keith has been praising Farage and attacking the EU on the Star Sports website since 2013, when he called on the U.K. to stop “pissing away billions into the bottomless-drain, which is the EU.” After the election, Keith drew a comparison between Farage and Mahatma Gandhi, and later called for Farage to become the U.K.’s prime minister.
Keith told Bloomberg he’s friends with Farage, but that the politician had no formal role at Star Sports and did not give him bookmaking advice. Farage attended events, including Keith’s birthday party, in a personal capacity, Keith said, adding that they didn’t know each other until after the 2016 referendum.
Lyons Lowe, the pollster for Farage’s UKIP and his pro-Brexit group, began conducting polls as a sideline during the late 2000s—while he was still doing different work for banks in the City of London. Gambling was at the heart of his new hobby. Lyons Lowe conducted online surveys and also ran a website with others called “Special Bets.” That’s the name bookmakers give to unconventional wagers—basically, all wagering other than sports.
He started Survation in 2010. The firm’s profile grew as it began publishing polls in British media outlets showing increasing support for Farage’s UKIP, which then hired Survation to carry out research, becoming a top client.
Lyons Lowe continued to gamble as Survation’s prominence rose in politics, wagering tens of thousands of dollars on elections in which he was conducting public surveys, according to six different sources with knowledge of his wagers. He bet on special elections to fill vacant parliamentary seats, which are called by-elections in the U.K., on at least one market-moving referendum, and on general elections, those individuals said. Most notably, he wagered thousands of pounds on the Scottish independence referendum in 2014, and the 2015 U.K. general election.
In what would become a trial run of sorts for Brexit, Survation secretly carried out private polling around the Scottish independence vote for top money managers, including Nomura Securities and Brevan Howard, Bloomberg has reported. Lyons Lowe placed at least five separate wagers around the 2015 general election over eight days totaling almost £20,000 with Betfair and IG Group, according to two sources with detailed information about these bets. Betfair is a betting exchange that offers odds on political events.
The U.K. has no laws preventing anyone from gambling on political contests, even if they’re participating in them. But some polling firms, including others involved in hedge-fund polls for Brexit, bar staff from wagering on political events in which they’re conducting polls that are released to the general public.
In a statement emailed to Bloomberg, Survation said it was proud of its record: “The provision of accurate insight and prediction services is the primary business activity of Survation and the company will continue to abide by all rules and regulations that relate to our activities.” The Market Research Society maintains a code of conduct that says pollsters should always “protect the reputation and integrity of the profession.” Jane Frost, CEO of the group, said in an emailed statement that it was the business of each firm to manage its own policy on gambling.
Based on Bloomberg’s investigation of Brexit polling, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority said in October that it is examining the secret relationships between pollsters and hedge funds. The FCA, which is the U.K.’s financial prosecutor and regulator, is specifically looking at whether such arrangements could violate laws or regulations against market abuse and insider dealing, or whether loopholes need to be closed, officials have said. Financial firms from Europe, the U.S. and Asia were all involved.
According to current and former officials familiar with the FCA’s inquiry, the main concerns are likely to center on two types of market-moving, non-public information that pollsters sold to hedge funds—data that revealed the contents of market-moving polls before they were made public, and exit-polling data that it would have been illegal for pollsters to share with the public.
Those concerns remain as the country faces the prospect of another Brexit-driven vote, be it a general election or a second referendum.
December 13, 2018
NBA Signs Deal With Second Sports Betting Partner
he NBA on Tuesday signed its second sports betting partner that will buy the official data to the league’s games and be able to use team and league trademarks.
The deal is with The Stars Group, a Canadian-based company that currently has an operating license in New Jersey under its BetStars brand.
BetStars will be called an “Authorized Gaming Operator” of the NBA, a designation that the league intends to sell to others.
The NBA was the first U.S. sports league to do an official deal with a betting partner, signing MGM as the “official gaming partner” in July. MGM went on to do similar deals with the NHL and Major League Baseball.
“This is the second company that has done a deal that has seen the value of working together with the league,” Scott Kaufman-Ross, the NBA’s head of fantasy and gaming, told The Action Network. “They’ve understood that, aside from the data, they get the rights to the marks and logos on their platform, which helps differentiate them from the offshore sites and others and leads to having a more authentic looking product.”
The deal includes promoting BetStars on NBA assets, including NBA.com. How intricately the NBA will promote odds available on the site is unknown, but the technology exists that will allow the league to geotarget so that odds can be shown to someone with an IP address of a state that has legalized gambling, while shielding the odds from a consumer in a non-legalized state.
The Stars Group spokesman Vaughan Lewis told The Action Network that the deal “further enhances consumer confidence in our offering and acts as an official endorsement of our sportsbook offering here in the States.”
Kaufman-Ross said that selling data is not taking the place of the league’s pursuit of an integrity fee, whereby the league would get a small percentage of the total handle bet on its games from operators.
“We will still pursue the so-called integrity fee in parallel,” Kaufman-Ross said. “We hope states will recognize the role we play in legislation.”
None of the eight states that currently offer legal sports betting pay the leagues an integrity fee. Washington D.C., which could legalize sports gambling next Tuesday, recently removed the integrity fee requirement. Some states, like Missouri, Kansas and Michigan, are currently debating whether they should set aside the fees from operators to go to leagues.
The deal is with The Stars Group, a Canadian-based company that currently has an operating license in New Jersey under its BetStars brand.
BetStars will be called an “Authorized Gaming Operator” of the NBA, a designation that the league intends to sell to others.
The NBA was the first U.S. sports league to do an official deal with a betting partner, signing MGM as the “official gaming partner” in July. MGM went on to do similar deals with the NHL and Major League Baseball.
“This is the second company that has done a deal that has seen the value of working together with the league,” Scott Kaufman-Ross, the NBA’s head of fantasy and gaming, told The Action Network. “They’ve understood that, aside from the data, they get the rights to the marks and logos on their platform, which helps differentiate them from the offshore sites and others and leads to having a more authentic looking product.”
The deal includes promoting BetStars on NBA assets, including NBA.com. How intricately the NBA will promote odds available on the site is unknown, but the technology exists that will allow the league to geotarget so that odds can be shown to someone with an IP address of a state that has legalized gambling, while shielding the odds from a consumer in a non-legalized state.
The Stars Group spokesman Vaughan Lewis told The Action Network that the deal “further enhances consumer confidence in our offering and acts as an official endorsement of our sportsbook offering here in the States.”
Kaufman-Ross said that selling data is not taking the place of the league’s pursuit of an integrity fee, whereby the league would get a small percentage of the total handle bet on its games from operators.
“We will still pursue the so-called integrity fee in parallel,” Kaufman-Ross said. “We hope states will recognize the role we play in legislation.”
None of the eight states that currently offer legal sports betting pay the leagues an integrity fee. Washington D.C., which could legalize sports gambling next Tuesday, recently removed the integrity fee requirement. Some states, like Missouri, Kansas and Michigan, are currently debating whether they should set aside the fees from operators to go to leagues.
December 06, 2018
Gambling firms agree 'whistle-to-whistle' television sport advertising ban
The Remote Gambling Association (RGA), which includes Bet365, Ladbrokes and Paddy Power, has struck a deal to stop adverts during live sports broadcasts.
It follows political pressure about the amount of betting advertising on TV.
More than 90 minutes of adverts were shown during the football World Cup and anti-gambling campaigners say sport's use of adverts "normalises" betting.
There are also fears it contributes to the rise in the amount of problem gamblers - with a Gambling Commission report suggesting 430,000 Britons can be described as such - and helps fuel under-age gambling.
The deal follows extensive talks between firms - also including SkyBet, Betfred, Betfair, Stan James, Gala Coral and William Hill - to ensure no adverts will be broadcast for a defined period before and after a game is broadcast.
The proposal is similar to those made by the Labour party and, importantly, will include any game that starts prior to the 9pm watershed but ends after that time.
The RGA has previously said it was "very mindful of public concerns".
Horse racing will be exempt from the restrictions - given the commercial importance of gambling on its viability - but all other sports will be included.
However, it is the impact on football where the ban will be felt the most, especially given the financial value of the sport to both the gambling companies and broadcasters.
Nearly 60% of clubs in England's top two divisions have gambling companies as shirt sponsors.
Final ratification is needed from the Industry Group for Responsible Gambling (IGRG) before the ban comes into force.
That should be a formality, according to industry insiders, and could come as early as this month or in early 2019.
On Thursday, the RGA said: "The Gambling Industry Code for Socially Responsible Advertising is reviewed annually, and several options are currently being considered as the basis for possible enhancements in 2019.
"However, nothing has yet been finalised."
Tom Watson MP, Labour's Shadow Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said he was "delighted" by the move as the number of adverts during live sports had "clearly reached crisis levels".
He added: "There was clear public support for these restrictions and I'm glad that the Remote Gambling Association has taken its responsibilities seriously and listened."
Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Jeremy Wright MP, said it was a "welcome move".
"Gambling firms banning advertising on TV during live sport is a welcome move and I am pleased that the sector is stepping up and responding to public concerns," he said.
"It is vital children and vulnerable people are protected from the threat of gambling related harm. Companies must be socially responsible."
Sarah Hanratty, chief executive of the Senet Group - the industry's responsible gambling body, funded by the four largest UK gambling companies - said: "It has been clear for some time now that the volume and density of advertising and sponsorship messaging from gambling companies around live sport has become unsustainable.
"This is a welcome move from the leading industry operators who are taking the initiative to respond to public concern."
Could shirt sponsorship be next?
Matt Zarb-Cousin is a spokesperson for Fairer Gambling, a not-for-profit entity campaigning to reduce gambling-related harm and crime.
Will it make a difference?
Marc Etches is the chief executive of GambleAware, a leading charity committed to minimising gambling-related harm.
It follows political pressure about the amount of betting advertising on TV.
More than 90 minutes of adverts were shown during the football World Cup and anti-gambling campaigners say sport's use of adverts "normalises" betting.
There are also fears it contributes to the rise in the amount of problem gamblers - with a Gambling Commission report suggesting 430,000 Britons can be described as such - and helps fuel under-age gambling.
The deal follows extensive talks between firms - also including SkyBet, Betfred, Betfair, Stan James, Gala Coral and William Hill - to ensure no adverts will be broadcast for a defined period before and after a game is broadcast.
The proposal is similar to those made by the Labour party and, importantly, will include any game that starts prior to the 9pm watershed but ends after that time.
The RGA has previously said it was "very mindful of public concerns".
Horse racing will be exempt from the restrictions - given the commercial importance of gambling on its viability - but all other sports will be included.
However, it is the impact on football where the ban will be felt the most, especially given the financial value of the sport to both the gambling companies and broadcasters.
Nearly 60% of clubs in England's top two divisions have gambling companies as shirt sponsors.
Final ratification is needed from the Industry Group for Responsible Gambling (IGRG) before the ban comes into force.
That should be a formality, according to industry insiders, and could come as early as this month or in early 2019.
On Thursday, the RGA said: "The Gambling Industry Code for Socially Responsible Advertising is reviewed annually, and several options are currently being considered as the basis for possible enhancements in 2019.
"However, nothing has yet been finalised."
Tom Watson MP, Labour's Shadow Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said he was "delighted" by the move as the number of adverts during live sports had "clearly reached crisis levels".
He added: "There was clear public support for these restrictions and I'm glad that the Remote Gambling Association has taken its responsibilities seriously and listened."
Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Jeremy Wright MP, said it was a "welcome move".
"Gambling firms banning advertising on TV during live sport is a welcome move and I am pleased that the sector is stepping up and responding to public concerns," he said.
"It is vital children and vulnerable people are protected from the threat of gambling related harm. Companies must be socially responsible."
Sarah Hanratty, chief executive of the Senet Group - the industry's responsible gambling body, funded by the four largest UK gambling companies - said: "It has been clear for some time now that the volume and density of advertising and sponsorship messaging from gambling companies around live sport has become unsustainable.
"This is a welcome move from the leading industry operators who are taking the initiative to respond to public concern."
Could shirt sponsorship be next?
Matt Zarb-Cousin is a spokesperson for Fairer Gambling, a not-for-profit entity campaigning to reduce gambling-related harm and crime.
It is long overdue, there has been a huge amount of pressure on the sector over the volume of advertising which has increased exponentially year on year.
But for it to be truly effective, it should also include shirt and league sponsorship and digital advertising around a pitch.
It is better that there are going to be no ads during live sporting events but that falls some way short of being effective. If the whistle-to-whistle TV advertising ban is justified then the other things are as well.
I think it is worth bearing in mind that it is the broadcasters that have been most resistant to the clampdown on advertising.
I think the writing is on the wall. If they hadn't done this, the government would have acted anyway, perhaps next year.
There is no legislation in the pipeline but the strength of feeling cross-party and in both houses suggests that it is unsustainable.
Will it make a difference?
Marc Etches is the chief executive of GambleAware, a leading charity committed to minimising gambling-related harm.
We have been saying for a long time now that gambling is being increasingly normalised for children. They are growing up in a very different world than their parents, one where technology and the internet are ever present.
So while we welcome this move by betting companies, it is important to pay attention to analysis that shows the marketing spend online is five times the amount spent on television.
The fact that it is reported that one in eight 11 to 16 year olds are following gambling companies on social media is very concerning.
December 05, 2018
Green Light for Japan Casinos Offers Jackpot to Businesses
Let the competition begin.
Now that Japan has passed a law outlining a road map for casino resorts, foreign operators from Las Vegas Sands Corp. to MGM Resorts International can start to seek out partners in their bid to tap a gaming market that may be worth as much as $25 billion. It could also be a boon for Japanese industries - from companies that oversee a resort project to construction giants building infrastructure.
There is still a long road ahead, but talks between Japanese companies and Western operators will become more serious now that the government has given the green light. Local municipalities will eventually start requesting proposals from consortium groups that want to pitch their plans.
“This business becomes a legitimate viable business after the bill passes,” said Masaru Sugiyama, an analyst at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. “Companies that weren’t willing to come public with their aspirations - we’ll see them be more active with press releases, briefings, blue prints coming out for what kind of projects they want to do and where, and who they want to partner with.”
Now that Japan has passed a law outlining a road map for casino resorts, foreign operators from Las Vegas Sands Corp. to MGM Resorts International can start to seek out partners in their bid to tap a gaming market that may be worth as much as $25 billion. It could also be a boon for Japanese industries - from companies that oversee a resort project to construction giants building infrastructure.
There is still a long road ahead, but talks between Japanese companies and Western operators will become more serious now that the government has given the green light. Local municipalities will eventually start requesting proposals from consortium groups that want to pitch their plans.
“This business becomes a legitimate viable business after the bill passes,” said Masaru Sugiyama, an analyst at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. “Companies that weren’t willing to come public with their aspirations - we’ll see them be more active with press releases, briefings, blue prints coming out for what kind of projects they want to do and where, and who they want to partner with.”
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