Peter best bookmaker
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At this time, both the location and the service environment offered to customers was strongly influenced by the enabling legislation, which sought to affirm that betting should not be an enjoyable activity and that there should be no stimulation to encourage people to gamble. Initially, existing local bookmakers, who took the opportunity presented by the 1960 legislation to ply their trade legally, ran the vast majority of these betting shops. The first betting shops were opened in 1961 and by the end of the decade, bookmakers were trading from almost 16,000 outlets. Up to the early 1960s, illegal sporting betting flourished via “street bookies” and “bookies runners” who accepted bets, supposedly secretly, in back streets, on street corners and in houses, pubs and factories.Īll was to change with the passage of the 1960 Betting and Gaming Act, which formally, if begrudgingly, recognised the existence of this extensive gambling market and sanctioned the opening of betting shops. However, by the start of the twentieth century, sporting betting was an integral part of working-class culture and it was highly organised.
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Huggins ( 2000) suggested “ there was already a clear culture of urban betting” and argued that “ betting had already moved from a pre-industrial informal sporting model to an urban industrialized, commercialized mass-market model.” Increases in the speed of newspaper circulation and the development of the telegraph system in the 1890s, which made horse racing results more widely and immediately available, and improved economic conditions, which increased the general population's spending power, all served to stimulate the popularity of off-course betting.ĭespite its growing popularity, such betting was illegal following the introduction of a series of legislative measures from the 1850s, which sought to curtail and control gambling because of the paternalistic view that gambling encouraged absence from work, an anti-work ethic and criminal activity fuelled by gambling losses. Within the UK, formal betting at sporting events, principally on horse racing and boxing, was increasingly common from the seventeenth century (by the 1840s). 2 ORIGINS AND CHANGING CHARACTERISTICS OF BETTING SHOPS This commentary paper outlines the origin and characteristics of betting shops, explores some of the recent concerns betting shops have attracted and offers some brief concluding reflections on the impact of policy responses to these concerns. Gambling is probably as old as society but the first betting shops in the UK were opened in 1961 following the passage of the 1960 Betting and Gaming Act. Such media headlines certainly seem to reflect deeper social and political concerns, and betting shops, for many people the public face of gambling, have been under particular scrutiny. Newspaper article headlines such as “ Britain's betting out of control” (The Guardian January 21, 2020) and “ We can't turn a blind eye to the gambling epidemic any longer” (Sunday Mail February 2, 2020) suggest that gambling is very much in the public eye.