Месяц: Октябрь 2014

It is the smash-hit musical that boasts of how it was "lovingly ripped off" from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. So perhaps it is no surprise that Spamalot should undergo its own reincarnation, albeit one that has dismayed at least one of the Pythons themselves.

The rollout of Monty Python's Spamalot fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs) in Ladbrokes betting shops gives punters the chance to win up to £500 at a time, and the opportunity, as the Knights of the Round Table sing in the musical, to "try your luck in Camelot; run amok in Camelot; it doesn't suck in Camelot".

But using the Python-inspired brand to promote fixed-odds terminals – which have been labelled the "crack cocaine" of betting, and are now responsible for 50% of bookmakers' profits – has dismayed gambling awareness charities, who claim punters can lose hundreds of pounds playing them in just minutes.

Following a barrage of criticism on Twitter, John Cleese sought to distance the Python team from the row, saying: "Dear Twits, Please understand that Python has no control over Spamalot activities. They pay us royalties for using the Grail script. That's it."

The stakes that can be waged on FOBTs are sizeable. Certain terminals – those that fall into the B2 licensing category and are often based on roulette or blackjack – allow punters to gamble up to £100 at the press of a button. A Ladbrokes spokesman said punters will "normally" stake only £2 a game playing Spamalot, the maximum wager for a B3 category game. But he admitted the stakes could be increased.

"There is a feature in the game which enables a player to stake higher – up to £30 – at which point they receive a message they are moving to higher stake content, B2, but not at the maximum £100 stake of other B2 games," the Ladbrokes spokesman confirmed.

Gambling awareness experts said the "hybrid" terminals are a cynical attempt to suck players in. "They are driving low-stakes players on to higher stakes, and that is wrong," said Adrian Parkinson, a consultant to the Campaign for Fairer Gambling (CFG), who introduced FOBTs to Britain when he worked for the Tote and later became a whistle-blower, speaking out against the industry. "It is a real shame that any popular entertainment brand, such as Monty Python, should ever be associated with this manipulative type of gambling product," a spokesman for the CFG added.

A version of the Spamalot slot machine game already exists online, sparking concerns that it will attract younger players into betting shops. The CFG claims it is easier for under-18s to play for real money in betting shops on FOBTs, as age verification is "persistently weak" compared to remote gambling. In response, Ladbrokes said research indicated that problem gambling levels were on a downward trend in England and Wales. It pointed to new research by Professor Mark Griffiths of Nottingham Trent University showing that average gaming machine sessions involve stakes of £7 and last 10 minutes.

Marc Etches, chief executive of the industry-funded Responsible Gambling Trust (RGT), said the RGT was investigating FOBTs. "The RGT has commissioned independent research to better understand how people behave when playing on these gaming machines and to help policymakers to make informed decisions in the future." He added: "In the meantime, the RGT has highlighted the need for bookmakers' staff to be trained to understand the nature of problem gambling behaviour."

It is unclear whether the other Pythons – Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Terry Gilliam and Eric Idle – know about the Ladbrokes deal.

"Python exercises no control over Spamalot decisions or actions," Cleese said in one tweet, adding: "We are not even consulted." In another Cleese said: "I would not have endorsed the decision to use Spamalot to promote gambling if I had been asked."

A company called Space Enterprises says on its website that it is the licensing agent for Spamalot. Emails to its chief executive requesting comment were not returned.

A spokesman for the Gambling Commission said steps were being taken to clarify the role of hybrid fixed-odds machines.

"The industry are currently in the process of introducing additional measures in respect to hybrid type games to ensure that the player is in no doubt as to what category of game they are playing following intervention by the commission."

Trump Entertainment Resorts filed for bankruptcy Tuesday and threatened to shut down the Taj Mahal Casino Resort, which would make it the fifth casino to close this year.

The company owns Trump Plaza, which is closing in a week, and the Taj Mahal, which has been experiencing cash-flow problems and had been trying to stave off a default with its lenders. The company said the Taj Mahal could close 13 November.

It’s the fourth such filing for the struggling casino company or its corporate predecessors.

The company filed in US Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware, saying it has liabilities of between $100m and $500m, and assets of no more than $50,000. It missed its quarterly tax payment due last month, and says it doesn’t have the cash to make an interest payment to lenders due at the end of the month.

It also says both its Internet gambling partners have taken steps to end their contracts with Trump Entertainment.

It said cost-cutting negotiations with the main casino workers’ union have stalled, and that the company is preparing notices warning employees the Taj Mahal may close on 13 November.

The Guardian visits Atlantic City’s failing casinos.
“Absent expense reductions, particularly concessions from their unions, the Debtors expect that the Taj Mahal will close on or shortly after 13 November, 2014 and that all operating units will be terminated between November 13, 2014 and November 27, 2014,” the company wrote in its bankruptcy filing.

Trump Entertainment has struggled since the day it emerged from its last bankruptcy in 2010, having filed the year before. It came out of bankruptcy with $350m in debt, and currently has more than $285m in debt.

“Since emerging from their prior bankruptcy cases in 2010, the debtors continued to face significant challenges due to the prolonged economic downturn, increased competition from within the Atlantic City market and from neighboring states, and the lingering effects of Superstorm Sandy, all of which contributed to declining revenues,” the company wrote. “These factors, coupled with the seasonal and capital-intensive nature of the debtors’ businesses, high debt load, significant labor costs and double-digit real estate tax increases, hindered the debtors’ ability to operate successfully and negatively impacted the debtors’ liquidity position.”

As of the end of July, the company employed 2,800 people.

The company has been trying to reduce expenses and debt, including selling its former Trump Marina casino for $38m to Landry’s Inc, which now runs it as the Golden Nugget Atlantic City. It also sold the Steel Pier for $4.5m; a warehouse for $1.9m, and its former corporate offices in a converted firehouse for $3.1m. That building now houses the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority.

It has been trying for years to sell Trump Plaza. A deal to sell it to a California firm for $20m last year fell through.

The company also said it has been in negotiations with Local 54 of the Unite-HERE union on cost-cutting measures it says it needs to survive, but that the union has rejected them. Bob McDevitt, the union president, could not immediately be reached for comment.

The concessions would be on top of a separate $4m round of union concessions the company won in 2011.

Donald Trump owns a 10% stake in the firm, but no longer controls it. He is suing the company to remove his name from the properties, which he says have fallen into disrepair and do not meet agreed-upon standards of quality and luxury.

Three other Atlantic City casinos have closed this year, as the industry struggles with competition in nearby states.

Atlantic City began the year with 12 casinos, but could end it with seven if the Taj Mahal closes. So far this year, the Atlantic Club, Showboat and Revel have gone out of business, with Trump Plaza closing next Tuesday.

If the Taj Mahal closes, Trump Entertainment would have no remaining properties and would presumably go out of business.

Childcare services could be offered at licensed clubs in return for tax breaks on gambling profits, the poker machine lobby has suggested to the productivity commission.

Anthony Ball, executive director of Clubs Australia, wrote in its submission to the childcare inquiry that the shortfall in childcare services could be made up by clubs around Australia, Fairfax reported on Sunday.

The productivity commission is examining future options for childcare and early childhood learning, and the prospect of developing a system to address the “learning and development needs” of children and which also supports workforce participation.

On behalf of his organisation, which represents 4,000 clubs, Bell urged the commission to consider an attached report by the McKell Institute, commissioned by Clubs Australia, as a “credible solution to the chronic shortage of affordable social services and infrastructure across Australia”.

“Key recommendations include the establishment of an infrastructure fund and an extension of income tax exemptions to cover clubs whose primary purpose involves the provision of social services including childcare,” Bell wrote.

“It is within this space that not-for-profit clubs are well positioned to deliver affordable access to childcare; the Industry’s extensive community networks, sizeable facilities, geographic footprint and capital expenditure programs ensures that clubs can help fill service gaps where the demand is most acute.”

On Sunday Victorian premier Denis Napthine shut down any suggestion that licensed clubs could provide childcare in exchange for tax breaks.

He said the Victorian coalition government would be “very dubious” about licensed clubs offering childcare services.

“I think that’s fraught with a lot of danger,” Napthine said.

Independent South Australian senator Nick Xenophon told Guardian Australia he was “wary” of the proposal and said the question needed to be asked if the childcare centres would be located on club premises.

“If they do have them there, there would have to be a whole range of safeguards,” said Xenophon.

“I think instinctively there must be a much better way.”

“I’m deeply sceptical that clubs which have childcare centres won’t use the childcare centres as a marketing ploy for parents to have a gamble at the pokies venues, in which case, seemingly affordable childcare could end up costing parents the earth.”

Independent Tasmanian senator Andrew Wilkie said the idea was appalling.

“The poker machine industry’s interest in now running childcare centres surely must be some kind of sick joke,” the independent Tasmanian MP said.

The report suggested clubs could offer low-cost childcare services due to existing infrastructure which already allowed some clubs to provide low-cost aged care.

“As community organisations with strong connections to their local communities, many clubs have the potential to engage with the provision of childcare services,” read the report.

Among its recommendations, the report suggested clubs should receive further tax exemption for primarily providing child or aged care.

“If aged care and childcare were specified as a legitimate community service purpose, up to one-third of the 4,000 clubs in Australia which currently pay income tax could gain access to a new income tax exemption in exchange for diversifying into the provision of new aged care or child care facilities,” it said.

It also called for a “streamlining” of the process for clubs seeking to amalgamate, primarily by loosening the restrictions in the local impact assessment (LIA) required when transferring entitlements to install poker machines.

“An unnecessarily lengthy and uncertain LIA process can act as a disincentive to further club amalgamations, potentially weakening the capacity of the clubs industry to invest in social services,” it said.

Tim Costello from the Australian Churches Gambling Taskforce said the suggestion was “inappropriate”.

“This would be socially devastating, to allow problem gamblers who are mums to drop off their kids and gamble,” he told Fairfax.

Three of the four big high street bookmakers have signed up to a new voluntary watchdog in the hope of preempting a raft of tough statutory measures that threaten the prevalence of betting shops, high-speed roulette machines and aggressive punter-recruitment adverts promising "free money".

William Hill, Ladbrokes and Coral, together with the smaller competitor Paddy Power, have promised from next month to remove all adverts for touch-screen roulette machines from their windows and to dedicate a fifth of the space to responsible gambling messages.

They have also said they will refrain from advertising sign-up offers that suggest new players can obtain "free bets" or "free money" before 9pm.

From the start of next year, through a new trade body called the Senet Group, they will fund an educational advertising campaign on problem gambling and ensure all their TV adverts carry more prominent responsible gambling messages.

Campaigners against betting shop roulette machines – also known as fixed odds betting terminals, or FOBTs – were quick to condemn the initiative. A spokesman from the Campaign for Fairer Gambling said: "The bookmakers are engaging in desperate conjuring tricks to protect their FOBT market monopoly and, put simply, this is just more smoke and mirrors.

"If the Gambling Commission was fit for purpose there would not be the need for a watchdog. But for any such watchdog to have credibility it should be neither industry-run nor industry-funded."

The industry continues to face regulatory challenges on several fronts. Foremost among them are measures under consideration by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport that would make it harder for roulette machine players to place impulsive bets of more than £50 on one spin of a wheel.

Until now, punters have been able to stake as much as £100 per spin, and regulatory data suggests wagers of between £50 and £100 account for 7% of bets, and as much as 37% of gross profits from players.

Ministers have resisted campaigners' calls for a simple reduction of the maximum stake, instead preferring a measure that would require high-stakes players to seek permission of shop staff before the bet is accepted.

The Gambling Commission, the industry's main regulator, is consulting on tough new licensing standards that could include a social responsibility code and advertising restrictions. Separately, planning reforms could lead to betting shops being put into a new use class, potentially making it harder to secure permission for new sites.

The establishment of the Senet Group echoes pro-active moves by the Portman Group, the drinks industry trade body, to set voluntary standards on branding and advertising and to fund awareness-raising adverts, in the face of public concern about binge drinking.

Family-owned Betfred, which has 1,375 betting shops after buying state-owned Tote shops three years ago, is not a signatory to the Senet Group, but a spokesman said the business remained in discussions about signing up. The bookmakers are hopeful that online operators will also get involved.

James Henderson, chief executive of William Hill, said: "The launch of the Senet Group sets a benchmark by which we and the betting industry can be judged."

A Ladbrokes spokesman said: "This is about striking the balance between a player's right to bet and the visibility of gambling on the high street and on TV. We accept that the balance has not been right in the past."

TV gambling ads that offer punters “free money” if they sign up with bookmakers online, including Ray Winstone’s commercials for Bet365, are expected to be ditched under new rules proposed by the industry.

William Hill, Ladbrokes, Coral and Paddy Power committed to a series of measures on Monday as they look to head off tough statutory measures that threaten the prevalence of betting shops, high-speed roulette machines and aggressive punter-recruitment adverts promising “free money”.

These measures including a promise “to introduce a voluntary TV advertising ban on sign-up offers (free bets and free money) before 9pm”.

Such commercials typically offer customers free money in return for registering online with a bookie.

All the leading bookies offer such “free bets”, as a means of drawing in new customers. According to estimates, such free bets amount to around 20% of the four bookies’ TV advertising.

Ladbrokes, William Hill, Coral and Paddy Power have now committed to not run such ads from 1 October, with the rest of the industry expected to follow suit.

An example of such advertising is the long running campaign for online-only bookmaker Bet365 featuring Winstone which offers gamblers a free “deposit bonus” of £200 if they sign up.

Bet365 is expected to sign up to the new pledges in the coming months, which will be overseen by a new industry body, the Senet Group.

A spokesman for the Senet Group said: “We are in discussions with the industry and hope that more organisations will join.”

The other key measures proposed by the bookmakers are the withdrawal of all advertising of gaming machines from betting shop windows and a commitment that 20% of shop window advertising will go towards responsible gambling messages.

Further pledges from the industry, to be introduced from the start of next year, will be the funding of a major new advertising campaign to educate people on responsible gambling, and for all TV advertising to carry more responsible gambling messages.

Richard Glynn, chief executive of Ladbrokes, said: “Gambling has long been a leisure pursuit and part of the cultural fabric of the UK, but we are alive to the concerns of the public to keep gambling a responsible and fun activity.”

James Henderson, chief executive of William Hill, said: “The launch of the Senet Group sets a benchmark by which we and the betting industry can be judged.”

Carl Leaver, group chief executive of Gala Coral, said: “Actions speak louder than words. That’s why the Senet Group will be given the independence, budget and purpose to hold the betting industry to account.”

Patrick Kennedy, chief executive of Paddy Power, said: “Putting responsible gambling at the heart of our business is simply the right thing to do.”

The pledges were announced on Monday in a full-page open letter published as an ad in national newspapers by the bosses of the four companies.

The number of gambling commercials on British TV rocketed from 234,000 a year to nearly 1.4m annually between the deregulation of the sector in 2007 and 2012, according to Ofcom research published in November last year.

The research showed that viewers were bombarded with 1.39m gambling ads in 2012, with under-16s exposed to an average of 211 ads each.

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Andrew Wilkie described Clubs Australia’s proposal to start offering childcare services as a “sick joke”. Well ha ha, here’s the punchline: their proposal won’t just put childcare a stone’s throw away from the pokies, but will do something much sicker, which is to use the provision of critical social services like child care and aged care as collateral against future attempts at poker machine reform.

Now that’s a rib tickler! And the funniest part is how little current arrangements would need to change in order for it to become reality.

The Clubs Australia submission to the productivity commission’s childcare inquiry urged the commissioners to check out a report by the Labor-aligned McKell Institute, a thinktank that produces research in concert with industry groups.

The report, Meeting the Shortfall, was produced in conjunction with ClubsNSW, and the gist of its argument is this: childcare and aged care are growth industries, because of the need to increase female workforce participation and an ageing population; governments are increasingly reluctant to fund social services because of a shrinking tax base; and clubs are the only non-state organisation big enough, wealthy enough and with enough experience for widespread service delivery.

Already you can see that this isn’t about whether problem gamblers need professional child minding while they blow their pay packet on Queen of the Nile. What we’re talking about is clubs pushing for the right to deliver branded, privatised social services in the community. As the report puts it, “the clubs industry would significantly benefit from creating a ‘cradle-to-the-grave’ level of involvement with their communities”.

Here’s the clubs’ plan: obviously their main source of revenue is “EGM revenue” – electronic gaming machine profits, or as ordinary people describe it, the blood money we extract from problem gamblers.

That source of revenue “remains heavily exposed to taxation and regulatory frameworks” – in other words, political reform of poker machines will hit the clubs’ bottom line. The last time that happened was in 2007, when the ban on smoking in clubs cut NSW gaming machine revenue by 10.6% in the first year.

That revenue may go down further as real household incomes decline. The McKell report notes quite tartly that the result will be “a concurrent reduction in spending on discretionary activities, such as gaming”. Luckily, “it is unlikely that [households] will be able to outright ignore their need for essential services like child care and aged care ... giving low cost [not for profit] service providers a competitive edge”.

If they were to provide childcare, clubs would get an extra revenue stream that isn’t at risk from attempts to limit the amount punters can put through the pokies. More importantly, the McKell report recommends a couple of clever “reforms” that will lock service provision into a funding scheme dependent on clubs being able to maintain their poker machine funding at respectable levels.

Currently, a minimum of 0.4% of a club’s pokies profits over $1m automatically go into the ClubGRANTS Fund, a NSW government-administered pool of cash that pays out yearly out into community projects. The McKell report recommends the scheme be “enhanced” so that a club can instead directly invest in aged care or childcare centres they run themselves, and offset the costs against their 0.4% ClubGRANTS liability.

In essence, clubs want to be the recipients of their own non-negotiable charitable contributions to the scheme, and to plough that money into the upfront capital costs of building childcare or aged care centres on their own property. Doing so would turn the ClubGRANTS scheme from a source of one-off funding for sports facilities and walking tracks, to a perverse subsidy that would in all likelihood feed back into their existing hospitality and pokies revenue streams.

Remember, clubs also already have tax-free status and huge land holdings, many of which which are on $1-a-year “peppercorn” leases. On top of this, the report also recommends a whole series of tweaks to the existing tax regime, stamp duty, regulation and the like to encourage clubs to move into the sector. It also says volunteers should staff the clubs’ aged and child care centres in exchange for a stipend that would offset their university HECS debt.

This will all be done through amalgamating struggling clubs and smoothing the transfer of poker machine entitlements. The NSW Coalition government has a memorandum of understanding with the industry to support this process. Poker machine reform in NSW has already saved clubs $200m since 2011. And tweaking ClubGRANTS wouldn’t be a Herculean labour.

In essence, the more clubs make from pokies, the more revenue is captured by that 0.4% tax liability, which clubs want to be able to claim against to fund services. This turns kids and the elderly into insurance against poker machine reform. You can see the lines now: “clubs support the community, and any change to poker machines will threaten our ability to keep thousands of childcare and aged care places open...”

When I asked the McKell Institute’s executive director, Sam Crosby, whether funding such a scheme through tax concessions would entrench clubs’ ability to collect poker machine revenue, he told me that “poker machine revenue is entrenched. Nobody has been able to do anything about it, so why don’t we use it to do something good?”

It’s hard to agree, given that Crosby’s colleague at the McKell Institute, Tara Moriarty, who will launch the report next month, is a senior vice president of NSW Labor and high-profile opponent of Andrew Wilkie’s push for pokies reform under the Gillard government. If the political environment around poker machine reform is unchangeable, it’s because Labor has been the political beneficiary of gambling donations, and in the ACT, rakes in cash from its affiliated clubs.

The report is being launched by Moriarty and the NSW treasurer next month. The idea of handing over essential services to pokie palaces is likely to enjoy broad support in the political class. It’s easy to see why: the sector has been chronically underfunded, and is caught between the proposition of stricter means testing for high-income earners and United Voice’s Big Steps campaign, which would see childcare workers paid professional wages in a sector-wide transformation to “early childhood education”. That will likely involve expensive wage subsidies; without them, low-income families will be priced out of childcare altogether. Neither prospect is politically easy.

This is what happens when essential services aren’t funded properly by government: bizarre ideas like this suddenly become credible, and before you know it, they get implemented. How many more reminders do we need?