Brexit Part One – Was There A Gambling Industry Conspiracy?

Behind the glitz and glamor of the EU referendum vote was there a gambling industry conspiracy to cordon off the UK market and reinstate some of the protectionist laws that would rid some of the big domestic players of overseas competition from the continent? Did a convergence of vested interests misdirect the voting public and precipitate the UK leaving the European Union?

Brexit Vote Shock

• Against the odds
• 52% Leave
• 48% Stay

In the aftermath of the Brexit vote the search for some vestige of sanity has led some to assert that there were dark forces at work far beyond the mere machinations of Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove in the Leave Campaign. With the pollsters and bookies so far off the mark did their predictions and inferences amount to a disinformation campaign, and if so, to what end? Was there a gambling industry conspiracy surrounding the Brexit vote?

Certainly it seems unlikely that the nice people at Bet365 got together with their industry rivals in the dark shadows somewhere and organized a gambling industry conspiracy however with the future of UK gambling laws, amongst many others up, for grabs did the bookies have a vested interest in a vote to leave the European Union? Did their erroneous statement of the odds lead the UK astray in some way to their own net benefit? It seems so far fetched and yet……

Did They Just Not Tell The Truth To Suit Their Needs?

The Conspiracy Theories

• Market protectionism
• Political grandstanding
• Low information populism

What of the pollsters? The bankers? The brokers? Alongside the bookies all these extremely clever people in predictive industries wholly failed to spot which way the wind was blowing ahead of time, leaving most in the UK gambling news would be of a remain vote. The question is, given this sort of thing is their bread and butter, was it incompetence or collusion? Did they alongside the gambling industry conspiracy players create a climate in which the unthinkable became possible, and if so to what end?

The UK gambling industry is worth over 7bn GBP a year. It doesn’t matter which currency you make that, by the way, 7bn of anything is a lot. Obviously EU regulations stipulate that there must be open and free access to markets in any country for service providers in any other of the Union members, suddenly being free of that little shackle means that perhaps some of the big betting companies in the UK just ditched any possibility of foreign competition muscling in on it’s business.

Was There A Gambling Industry Conspiracy Over UK GGY?

This alone makes the gambling industry conspiracy suddenly not as meaningless as it first seemed. With a 7bn GBP GGY, that’s the Gross Gambling Yield a statistic that basically says how much the gambling industry won off the punters in any given year, at stake those that like to bet on sports in the UK are a commodity over which reign is very profitable, and there is an opportunity for profitable protectionism in Brexit that could not be ignored.

But how did the bookies desiring it make it so? Can they really be blamed? Was their really a gambling industry conspiracy that hoodwinked a nation? Sadly, with the news media complicit by dint of being entertainment far more than information these days, and loving the chaos for its boost in their viewing figures, yes, I’m afraid the chances are there really was a misrepresentation of the true facts, and in Part Two we’ll look at just how this profits few at the expense of many.