Sunday, June 13, 2010

The sports betting license

I was told that for every RM 1 that Berjaya makes from the sports betting business, the illegal sports betting syndicates earn RM 2.

In other words, by legalizing the market, the Government will be able to pull 1/3 of the illegal gamblers away from the syndicates if the information I received was right.

From here, the Government will be able to tax these gamblers and channel the money elsewhere for others who need or want to enjoy more welfare benefits.

That is, of course, if we look at this case only from a monetary point of view.


If we don't, we will be able to look at things differently.

By awarding the license to Berjaya, not only do we get monetary returns to the Government's funds, we can also successfully pool together a target cluster of identified gamblers.

This "legal" population of sports gamblers can then be subject to targets from the various Ministries that deal with social ills.

We can adopt all measures possible to solve issues such as addiction to gambling under effective campaign measures.

Hand in hand, the enforcement agencies can look at cases of illegal gambling syndicates and eradicate them as time goes by.

For all we know, more than 1/3 of the gambling population might move away from the illegal syndicates to legal outlets.

This is because there are worries at times that the illegal syndicates might not pay out if the amount gambled and the winning payout has a large spread.

So, we might end up having more "identified legal outlet gamblers" who migrated from the illegal gambling cluster which will make it easier for the Government to educate or assist them on addiction of gambling.

Why an open tender was not made, I believe Guan Eng can answer it well since he is also using selective tender after experiencing the troubles and negative side of open tender.

As such, I believe the awarding of sports betting license is justified to Ascot Sports and effectively to Berjaya Group.

The public and the Chinese community must not question Barisan Nasional on this matter since they did not attack Guan Eng too.

Or else, I am beginning to believe more and more by day that the Chinese are blindly going against Barisan Nasional and that all talks of "we are more concerned about issues" will turn out to be fairy tales.

On another issue that Pakatan Rakyat opposed the sports gambling license, I think we all know that sports gambling, horse gambling and the numbers gambling make no difference. It is still gambling.

Unless of course Tony Pua and the leaders of DAP can present to us the social effects differences and why sports gambling should be opposed or banned in Pakatan Rakyat states while other form of gambling can happily continue operating.

Well, DAP folks have another headache now since PAS leaders are calling for a phase out of gambling outlets in Pakatan Rakyat states. [ PAS wants end to gaming premises permit ]


Salam 1 Malaysia.

4 comments:

katdog said...

The problem with legalizing sports gambling is that it 'opens' up the activity to everyone. In the past only hardcore gamblers would risk getting caught or burned by using illegal bookies. The common Malaysian with no contacts to illegal bookies nor the stomach to run afoul with the law would not bother risking their time and money on illegal sports betting.

With legalized sports gambling,we may be converting 1/3 of illegal gamblers to the legal avenue. But the real danger is that we are also going to convert a whole new group of previously non-gamblers to become new gamblers.

That is the danger that UMNO-BN has unfortunately chosen not to mention (nor have they mentioned any safeguards against such an event). Legalizing sports gambling is going to lead to the creation of brand new gambling addicts in our society.

Unless BN-UMNO has same amazing new law that says only persons that used to use illegal bookies can bet in the new legalized sports betting. How can BN claim that the whole purpose of legalized sports gambling is merely to 'convert illegal gamblers to legal?

We might as well legalize prostitution like how Singapore does. People are going to visit illegal prostitutes anyway right?
Why not collect tax money and as well as provide better monitoring of the activity instead? I mean, we are just converting 1/3 of those that frequent illegal brothels to switch to legal brothels only after all.

Isn't the fallacy of such argument obvious?

Anonymous said...

Dear overseas Chinese friend,

The Chinese swing is going hard against BN in coming GE13!
Indecisive and incompetent leadership is causing our country to stagnate for too long...

Every policy Najib has announced so far is either U-turned, pull-backed or postponed.
Then shockingly, we are told is just awaiting public feedback only!

Is this a way to run government?
Then why waste so much money & resources to formulate economic & social policies if everything will be just trial balloons?

And you a Chinese MCA member is lecturing and talking down on our Chinese community as "blindly" going against BN government and talking "fairy tales"?!

Alot of empty talk and economic mismanagement means there's not many second chances for BN style of "experimentation" with our country's future...

BN leaders & members nowadays seems to think the Chinese community has no intelligence to know what's happening to this country.

We get our news & analyses from three or four newspapers every day, websites, blogs, friends overseas and local to cross-check situations on the gorund and the world.

If you are talking down to your own Chinese community, then it shows how much out-of-touch you & BN have been from the community.

~ "Blind & fairy tale" Chinese

Anonymous said...

I salute your thought 100%, you are truly MCA man.

weber said...

there are things you need to control, there are things you need to prevent.

should you control or prevent your siblings from taking drugs?