iGaming Daily

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Hello everyone. Welcome to RGaming Daily, sponsored by Optimove. I'm Ted Unclaim here again in the studio with my favourite co-host, Ted Memmier. So I know we shouldn't start off by talking about the weather. It's such a typically British thing to do, but there's a scorching summer going on, but it cannot stop UK politics from encroaching on gambling affairs. This weekend, Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch, positioned herself as a leading voice against tax hikes on gambling.

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throwing her support behind UK Racing's Acts the Racing Tax campaign. In need of an image refresh, is she playing games by hijacking a tax campaign and promoting rural causes? Meanwhile, in a more recent development, we've seen the Liberal Democrats get involved in the Football Governance Bill again. The Centrist Party wants at least 10 Premier League games shown free to air each season. This could be quite a crowd pleasing move.

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Unlikely sway rights holders who are more focused on auction fees than public access. And of course the premier league is a huge market for bookmakers. Football is most bet upon market in the UK. Took over from racing a few years ago actually to link it with the first half of that introduction. anyway, Ted, thanks very much for joining me on this podcast, of course, sponsored by Optomove. How's it going? How was the weekend? Very well. Just tuned in, watched Wimbledon.

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Uh, and yeah, observing the world go by. So yeah, very positive around good stuff. Uh, me and a couple of us in the office went to go and watch our colleague, Jack from the events team went to go watch his band, uh, at the Rat and Pidge in pub in Manchester. Uh, they were very good. Uh, cotton's give them a listen on Spotify. Uh, yeah, Jack's a very good drummer. We'll put a link with the, um, with the links to our articles. it's, it is Patriot.

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Which is another good hook because we can say, well, speaking about who needs an image refresh. We got to go and get there at least hooks. It's all the work in progress, mate. As are the Conservative Party's policies, it seems. Yeah, they're having a lot of trouble, aren't they, at the moment? They're polling behind both Labour and Reform.

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It seems that they seem to be in danger of losing their spot as the UK's leading center right to right wing party, a position they've held since the Victorian era. So yeah, they're desperate for a new look. Now, Kemi has obviously got involved in racing. She's made some comments about this. The UK racing has got a new campaign. Let's give our audience a bit of background into this. What are its fears around the tax hike and

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And also there's some fears about how it could impact rural communities. Can you give us a bit of a breakdown of this Ted? So last week, the BHA launched its national campaign, which is to ask the tax on UK racing. And it believes that if the government proceeds, which is still under review, let's say with its kind of tax consultation to align UK gambling tax taxes to one bracket.

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It will have a considerable impact on UK racings, value chains, on rural communities. And also it will cost the market round about 60 to 80 million pounds per year in actual kind of income and revenues directed towards gaming, directed to UK racing. So.

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The campaign, think we're trying to kind of proposition this much more as an unbiased campaign, calling out all ministers of whichever parties. But to the surprise or to our surprise as journalists, the number one figurehead is going to be Kevin Badenock, leader of the Conservative Party, jumping in with UK race and saying that this should not proceed. Yeah, it's quite an interesting development really. I mean, actually not too unsurprising of one either, think, because

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This isn't the first time the conservative MPs and indeed prime ministers have put some support behind the racing industry in relation to a lot of the betting reforms and regulator reviews that have been going on for past five years. mean, Rishi Sunak was quite vocal in kind of championing the racing cause, wasn't it? think a couple of times.

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I believe York Race Course fell under his constitution or was it Cataric, I think, wasn't it? Yeah. And that's where they launched his campaign to be PM. And as you remember, Wish was very much at the front line of rural causes, which he believed were kind of the conservative mantra. I mean, like you say Ted, the conservative party has always had quite a strong rural...

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stakeholdership, I guess, if that's a real term. It's often a party that's courted support from those areas, whilst Labour's traditionally been more the party of industrial areas and towns and cities, isn't it? Obviously, it's not entirely black and white, but that's usually the standard geographical regional line that's drawn between the two. So given that, it's not too unsurprising to see another Conservative party leader start to get involved in the racing

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side of things, the racing lobby with an interest in rural communities. So looking at this, do you think, I realize as well, we love putting our political punditry hats on you and me, don't we? I think this is like, I think the majority of our podcasts at the moment sort of end up descending into this. should UK racing welcome Kemi's support, especially as it's seeking to present tax reform as a non-partisan issue? Good question.

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I'm going to reply. I really don't know. mean, look, the conservative leader should be high profile voice, but at the moment where that party is, it really isn't. And I think there's also, you also have to review, can be Baydox movements last week. She was going out to UK FinTech and pitching the same message, go out to UK finance and pitching with the same message too.

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Uh, this is really, this is, this tells you more about the conservative party than the actual UK race campaign, in my opinion. And you've got an opposition that is dwindling. That really doesn't understand what it stands for. It is really kind of picking at straws to get scared. Anything on the labor party. And I think that this might be a move that comes back to bite them, especially like picking something such as the UK races campaign. It's is it to promote her?

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Is it to promote any new type of agenda for Conservative Party? No one knows. Yeah, it's a it's a very, it's a mishmash, isn't it, of sort of policies and opinions. think the going to, them going to FinTech is quite an interesting one, I think, because that's clearly got trying to go after a group that Labour has been quite actively caught in and wanting to get support from in recent years. mean, during the campaign, Rachel Reeves was quite keen to campaign last year, I should

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I should specify during the election. Reeves was quite keen to put the party across as a party of business, weren't they? And they've been doing a lot of initiatives around finance and banking and fintech and really wanting to hammer home how significant those sectors are to the economy. Obviously, the conservatives did too when they were in power as well. So that's not anything particularly new. But yeah, it's interesting seeing Kemmy Badernaut going to fintech and then racing and trying to find

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ways to get a labor in these different areas. There is of course always the prospect that maybe we're being a bit too cynical about Kenny Badock's motives here and the motives of politicians in general. Perhaps this says a lot more about the general British political public viewpoint of politics in recent years and a lot of cynicism and skepticism of

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of their motivations. But yeah, are we being too skeptical of her motives? Could it be that she does genuinely care about racing and rural causes here? Yes or no, but I think that just tells you more about the Conservative Party. Now, I've never seen a year where kind of the opposition has been like just sidelined. And especially, I think what a lot of Conservative strategists are saying is how do we get this party back in the limelight against

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not necessarily against labor, but against the up and coming parties such as, you know, reform, the Green Party, even the Lib Dems. mean, everyone's kind of stealing the limelight off the opposition and moving on. And we're to talk about that even more with the, the football governance bill and what the Lib Dems want. But it seems like just the pages aren't in the, they're not kind of telling you anything about the Conservative Party apart from like either the ministers are leaving, there's just conflicts across and no one likes it.

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Yeah, again, I know we mentioned this earlier, but this is obviously something that Nigel Farage has said before, isn't it? After reform did incredibly well in the last round of council elections, he said, we are now the opposition party. And opinion polling suggests they're way ahead of conservatives. At times it's suggesting that they're way ahead of Labour as well, and have become quite a serious force in British politics.

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And yeah, obviously the conservatives, both conservatives and labor will be concerned about that and concerned at the loss of support that they could be getting to reform. you've to remember these, you know, there is kind of a pitch to kind of get rural constituencies on board for these political parties, especially, you know, after what they considered, you know, a lot of communities considered it being an anti-labor government in terms of the inherent taxes on farms and also kind of labor's view of

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Labour's rural strategy all round. I think that that is kind of a battleground between reform and conservative in the upcoming manifesto. Yeah, that will be 100 % one for them. I like we saying earlier, is not accusing them of ignoring rural communities or anything like rural constituencies, but it's not going to be the main focus point for them, it? Labour's focus is on

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industrial areas, cities, towns, big metropolitan areas, that's their traditional support. that, you know, it would make a lot of sense that the rural constituencies would be more of a battleground for the conservatives and reform. And by extension of that, the sort of the racing industry element of this. So we'll just go for one more thing before we go for an ad break. Obviously the BHA is going to be wanting

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a lot of exposure for its new campaign. They're very concerned about what these perspective changes to tax are. mean, we should probably also clarify what the tax changes are, right? The proposal is that the three forms of gaming tax will be consolidated into one, including the racing duty, right? That's a summary of it.

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So surely any political support they're getting in Parliament, even if it is coming from the leader of a party that's having a bit of an identity crisis, surely any support is good support, right? And any good publicity is good publicity. I guess we'll find out. All right, there we go. Watch this space. Okay, we will just take a quick break and then we're going to get back to some more political talk where we're going to be looking at the Lib Dems. Okay, right, we're back in the studio. Again, it's the two Ted's.

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I'm Ted O.C. I'm here with Ted Memmier. We're once again trying to hand that political punditry because yeah, we can't stay away from it. So we've talked a lot about the Conservative Party there and the troubles they're having and how they're getting involved in the of the racing lobby. We're going to now look at the Liberal Democrats. They've made some comments on the football governance bill, which is continuing to progress through parliament. Obviously a bit of background on that. This had its origins in the former...

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Conservative government and the fan-led review of football, which in turn was basically from the backlash against the attempted European super league way back in when was that? Was that 2021 or 2022? I think it was 2021, wasn't it? The main thing of the football governance bill is introducing a new regulator, an independent regulator. Now the Liberal Democrats have proposed that some amendments to the bill.

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where they want to see a guarantee that at least 10 Premier League games will be shown free to air each season. Obviously at the moment the Premier League is completely held by pay TV platforms in the UK at least. So do you reckon Ted this is a serious proposal or is it just some kind of headline chasing attempt to drum up PR by the Liberal Democrats? I see well this is absolute banter.

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Which minister, which kind of head of PR signed off on that? mean, clearly this is headline chasing and look, if you can attach, you've been in this game long enough and if you can attach yourself to an evolving news line or an evolving dialogue, you know, you're doing your job and I think this is what the Lib Dems are doing at the moment.

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kind of deliver some form of of populist messaging to their campaigning and they might be through football. That's not particularly unusual either. I mean, didn't, I'm going way back when, this is back to when I was at university, but I mean, didn't Jeremy Corbyn have some policies around like around Premier League broadcasting or something? Maybe I'm misremembering, but I'm sure he had something like that.

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So, know, this, yeah, this isn't entirely unusual. don't know, you know, maybe they've been genuine, Ted. Maybe they do genuinely want us to be able to get some free Premier League matches. I don't know. I see your point. look, if you tell me this will be a governor of football and he wants five or 10 matches free per year, I'm not going to complain. And to be honest, if he did that, you could then just, you could say, well, doesn't that kind of fulfill the...

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the rebate of having a football regulator step in and focus on what the fans want. And also stemming from a fan led review of football, where I've imagined a lot of fans. I'd be interested in what a lot of people at bookmaker teams would think about this, because obviously the Premier League matches having more exposure could mean that you're going to have more audiences who might be interested in a bet on it.

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Hubs and places would be able to show it easier as well because it wouldn't have to pay for the more expensive like sky packages and so on that they have businesses. But on the other hand, obviously, let's say if it was shown free to wear on the BBC, that would then mean no advertising, which could hinder how bookmakers would promote offers and specials and so on around these matches. So I think that's quite interesting. But obviously, again, I'm going to put my cynical hat on. This isn't going to happen.

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This amendment isn't gonna get written into it But do you reckon we could see this perhaps in a Liberal Democrat Manifesto further down the line as and when we have a next election obviously there's not an election scheduled for Four years really, but they can call one whenever I think it would be very funny if they put it in the manifesto as kind of a pipeline They kind of pipe dream and if they by chance

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They want to be like the minority part in a new government, whether they would float that with labor or with the conservatives as a stick and carrot. But no, I don't see it kind of pulling through. it's look, I mean, again, I actually, don't mind this because it's quite kind of created politics. And like, it's the kind of thing that I would do if I ever became a strategic advisor for any political party. Just give.

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Give things away for free. That don't belong to you. And it's a choice. Would you ever run for an elected position, Ted? No comment. No comment. No. Not even like police and crime commissioner or something like that. No. mean, my mental sickness goes to following politics, right? Not being active in it. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. I think it's a much...

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It's a much safer platform to go for, think, being an observer, not a direct participant. Something else that I've seen though, the Liberal Democrats, I think one Liberal Democrat MP in particular has proposed this, was they've re-raised this again. Now this is obviously a lot more relevant to our beat on the betting industry, which is an amendment to...

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required clubs to have basically to impose a duty on clubs to not promote or engage in advertising and sponsorship related to English football. This is something that was attempted during the reading of the bill in the House of Lords, I think as well, also by liberal Democrat peers. This is quite interesting. think that they're not really letting this go. And again, I don't expect this to

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make it into the final bill because it was shut down during the House of Lords debates as well. And the government's position on this is, this issue has already been addressed by the Premier League with its voluntary ban coming in the end of next season and then obviously the gambling act review and the code of conduct. But it's showing us, isn't it, that these attempts to curb advertising at the legislative level aren't going away. Yeah, those are going, I mean, that outcome will be decided by the gambling act.

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And we've already had a labor government that said that, you know, they are willing to kind of re-review terms of advertising. Uh, a lot of that will depend on the feedback they get from CAP. Again, just focusing back on the football governance bill. Um, it's one of these mandates that like, as, as it gets closer, it's just like, how can we, uh, you know, how can we undertook this? Where are we with it? And is it just becoming like, uh,

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kind of a dumping ground for fantasy ideas. I'm not sure. Yeah. does seem like it, it does seem that it is a risk of that. Yeah. Of turning into just, yeah, a wish list of, um, of random policies that people have relating to football, which is, as we've kind of said, this is a, these kinds of angles are a good, they're a very good way for politicians and political parties to get a bit of publicity, aren't they? Like football is a national obsession in the UK.

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People are hugely passionate about their local teams and about the game itself. There was a massive amount of anger about the attempted European Super League and general sort of governance of football as well in terms of club governance. So it's quite a good way to get people interested in what you're saying. Again, I think what these two stories show you is that if you want a political appeal or you want political headlines,

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You know, if you go via the medium of sports, it's much more effective than talking. They're talking in the house of commons. They, you know, putting out a press release. It's, the best coverage you can get. Yeah. I yeah, I'd say it's a great way to reach people. like I said, we saw Jeremy Corbyn, um, to attempt this, uh, when he was leader of the lay party, think it was in the 2017 election. Um, but I'm sure he had obviously he had some policies around, think.

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I think football should be able to be reviewed by everyone. shouldn't have to pay for it. It's a national pastime and so on. It's community driven and all this. That was almost one of the many things that contributed to bringing Corbyn down though as well. Because I remember people saying at the time, he's trying to give away too much. He's promising too much with free football and free Wi-Fi and all this sort of stuff. And people were going, how are we going to pay for all of that?

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Yeah, it's a good way to connect with people and to put your name out there, but I think it can also lead to lot of cynicism around what it is that you're trying to do. to close us off then Ted, do reckon there can ever be a truly populist motive in English football in this sort of regard, or is it always going to be driven by the money? Great question. And I think if I look at football in

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2025, it is kind of the rebuild of the broadcasters, your foreign ownership. There's a lot there that, you you kind of could disconnect as a fan and as a consumer. But however, I think for kind of the UK economy and even British, Britain's status, like the pre-Buddy does work. It's one of the of the few areas that gets transmitted to the rest of the world.

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of like our power, our prestige. It's a very strange place. And I think the kind of attach kind of this fair play, kind of populist bandit. I don't think anyone wants it. Yeah, it's like you say, that's a very interesting point regarding it. And it's something that a lot of politicians have said throughout this legislative process and the debates around this bill.

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of how important it is to protect English football as a cultural asset and as a, a, as like almost as soft power as well. It is, it's, it's, it's absolutely, it is kind of like that, you know, that final bit of, of, you know, soft power that this country has. Yeah. Well, and we've talked all sorts here, Ted. I like how we've, we've really, we've really crossed the boundary well between sports punditry and political punditry, think.

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I hope people have enjoyed it. I hope we've not been rambling too much. I think that's all the time we've got for on this episode, but as always we'll put some links to some of the articles we've written about this below and we will see you next time for another episode of iGaming Daily. Cheers, Dad.