Encore...

I see more operators are pulling out of France. Some of them, of course, are doing so in order to apply for a licence, but others because their product offering is banned under the new legislation.

Specifically, Betclic has shut down its casino;

Sportingbet has blocked access to French customers while applying for a licence;

Paradise Poker has blocked access to French customers. And it is rumoured that BET365 is to close French accounts.

Meanwhile - quelle surprise! - the PMU have applied for a sports betting licence

Two thoughts spring to mind.

First, any lingering doubts from those among us who still believe in fairies that the French legislation is designed to protect the encumbent player must finally have exploded. The PMU is not obliged, as others are, to close its existing business while it goes through the application process.

The other is that experience has shown that it is actually remarkably difficult to win an account from another operator, because standard levels of customer lethargy mean that however good and competitive your product, people still tend to stick with their existing provider, because it's just too much like hard work to change. Famously, this is why people keep their bank accounts, on average, for longer than they keep a spouse.

This means that all those customers who are having their accounts closed, who will then go to open an account wherever they can, will be relatively unlikely to return where they were once their first operator is licensed. They have to go through the account opening process, submitting details, and perhaps having Know Your Customer checks done as well. Some simply won't be arsed.

This would be wonderful for France if they all, instead, opened with the PMU in the interim; but as the PMU offers neither innovation nor value, the chances are that they will, instead, open with an operator which is acting in breach of French law: in other words, in the black market.

Makes a lot of sense, this French law, non?

Fostering support

While we wait for the second round of the leaders' debate on television tonight, and exchange views on the Chancellor and his shadows squabbling yesterday, it's nice to see that the agreement between the betting industry and the Professional Players' Federation to help raise awareness among players of the issues in sport gets a positive airing in the Sports Ministerial equivalent in today's Independent.

Bet365

News that Bet365 toppled Betfair on Oddschecker over Cheltenham is likely to raise eyebrows in various places for various reasons.

Not least of the points that should be taken out from it, though, is that it ought to put to rest forever the absurd and oft-repeated notion that Betfair is the cause of falling margin in racing.

Not that falling margin is a bad thing, of course, as I have often suggested. With betting so often demonstrated by economists to be an elastic product, a fall in margin leads to a commensurate increase in turnover; and in a world where racing is paid on the basis of gross profit (the product of the two), that means the two things balance each other out (that is, 10% of 100 is the same as 5% of 200).

But the reason for falling margin, as I have said ad nauseam over the last few years, is not just Betfair, but competition. And while I am delighted to accept that Betfair is an extremely competitive operator, it isn't the only one.

The internet has made lots of operators more competitive, which would be seen as a good thing in any other industry but for some reason is a cause for a great deal of bleating in ours. I wonder whether the next time we hear a racing industry rep or a William Hill executive complaining about the pressure on their margins, we also hear them say, "it's all because of those beastly people at bet365".

I won't be holding my breath.

Estonia

The latest barmy action by a government as regards internet gambling has seen Estonia step up to the plate. As reported in Gambling Compliance today, the government there has instructed internet service providers to block access to "175 unlicensed internet gambling sites". Among the list are the brand names that you would know and recognise, other than that, by some quirk of fate, Paddy Power and bet365 have not fallen victim - yet.

The Durieux report commissioned by the French government estimated that there are 5,000 internet gambling websites out there. I wonder what Estonia plans to do about the other 4,825?

Surely it mist be abundantly clear to anyone with a brain that by definition, the sites that Estonia will name as the ones to block are the ones which are most likely to be licensed elsewhere, because otherwise the chances of Estonia ever having heard of them would be pretty slim.

Why is there any need for 5,000 sites to exist, other than because idiotic governments ban sites which consumers want to access, and encourage other people to set up sites to take advantage of the fact that those consumers are looking for a site which no Civil Servant has chanced upon?

So little thought is put into what the aim is that when Italy went down the same route, they temporarily blocked a chemical company's website, because they just assumed (and didn't check) that Gala Coral's website would be coral.com.

It should be funny. But it isn't.

Education, education, education

I'm delighted that we've signed a deal with the Professional Players' Federation, for a number of reasons.

First of all, it was fantastic that we were able to form a coalition with other members of the betting industry very quickly. They turned around the request to join us in very short order, which says a lot for intra-industry relationships, and for their commitment to working with sport. Hats off to Clive Hawkswood at the RGA, Mike O'Kane at Ladbrokes and John Coates at bet365.

Second, I'm looking forward to working with the PPF. Over the years, I've had a number of meetings with Simon Taylor and Brendon Batson in the hope that one day we'd get something done between us, and now that we have, I've got high expectations of what relationships we might forge with the CEOs of the other sports players' bodies. We already have a good working relationship with Kevin Darley at the Professional Jockeys' Association, whose doctor we fund in conjunction with the Injured Jockeys' Fund.

And third, I think that this deal will be the major driver towards fulfilling what, for me, was the major recommendation to come out of the Parry report which was published at the beginning of last week, and which I have been told off for not having yet commented on!

I'm surprised there has been as little reaction to that report as there has. I think it's fair to say that the meetings of the panel were more fractious than Rick Parry himself would have expected when he accepted the job of chairing it at the request of Sports Minister Gerry Sutcliffe.

But, despite there being moments when I think we probably all felt we would never achieve consensus, we ended up with what in my view was a good report. Certainly, I think it is one which the betting industry will do all it can to make a success. And for me, the single most important recommendation that came from it was the need for education of players. As Brendon Batson says in the PPF's press release, "would-be corrupters...can only access sport if they can find away to get to participants". So today's announcement, of a deal which has been worked on for a little while and which was signed just before the report's publication, is, I think, an extremely positive step.