Via “Europe’s foremost betting industry analyst†(or so he thinks he is), IC NewsCastle:
[...] What [the arrival of betting exchanges] has done is highlight the betting trends and any abnormal activity on animals that don’t run up to form, have drifted in the market and are only of interest from a laying point of view. If an individual is in possession of first-hand information that a horse has been injured at home and will miss its intended engagement, and he or she takes advantage by laying it ante-post, that falls into the cheating category. He or she cannot lose. However, if that same person is reliably told that a horse is not fancied for a particular race on a daily basis and is not expected to win, offering it at bigger odds on the exchanges for the purpose of laying, is fair play in my book. They can still lose.
Members of the [British] racing media are now being asked to sign up a code of conduct under which they will agree not to use such information to lay horses after the Horseracing Regulatory Authority were made aware of instances in which information had been “misused”. The HRA’s regulatory board are only interested in the negative use on the exchanges and they have gone as far as to say that it’s unacceptable for a horse to be laid on the exchanges that is known to be injured, dead or a non-runner. If the media doesn’t sign up, from September they could be subject to a criminal offence of cheating as betting on a known outcome simply amounts to that. [...]
Jesus!
