As Racing Victoria’s Chief Executive Robert Nason appeared to reveal the true agenda of some

Australian racing bodies behind the fight against Betfair, the Australian Racing Board yesterday

continued to publish press releases which misinform the public about Betfair’s business.

Mr. Nason told Radio 927 yesterday 1 that it makes no difference what issues can be settled regarding Betfair. "We don’t want you in Australia," was the clear message from Mr. Nason, as he purported to speak for the punting public. Whether concerns regarding funding and integrity could be solved was not the point, he said. He said that Australia simply did not want a punting mechanism "which gives punters a fair go".

Earlier this week, Betfair published an open letter to Mr Nason explaining clearly the legal reasons

why it is not able to reveal named information relating to its clients in the absence of a disclosure

agreement between Betfair and Australian racing authorities. This is precisely the same legal reason

cited by TAB Limited in also refusing to give named client information, but the difference is that

Betfair has repeatedly offered to sign an agreement with relevant Australian authorities, just like it has with the UK Jockey Club, Association of Tennis Professionals, International Cricket Council and other international peak bodies.

Yesterday it was made public in the Sydney Morning Herald that Privacy Laws in Australia prevent

TAB from giving information up on a named basis, as they do Betfair. Why do the ARB, RVL and

Racing NSW conveniently ignore this fact, particularly in the light of the impression they have created that they have full, unfettered access to everyone’s account details, and have sought to characterize Betfair as somehow being obstructive to their cause? Why are they not similarly critical of TAB?

Far from being so, the ARB has persisted since that revelation in implying that Betfair is an outlier.

Yesterday, it issued an erroneous press release which quotes a legal requirement as evidence that

Betfair apparently does not wish to help Australia’s racing bodies. The ARB selectively quoted from

Betfair’s terms and conditions as ‘proof’ that any of Betfair’s customers can deny permission for their details to be passed on. The terms and conditions state as follows:

"By providing your Personal Information and registering with us or logging on with us

when you enter our website, you explicitly consent to the Group processing and

disclosing your Personal Information for the purposes, and otherwise in the manner, set

out on this page, or as otherwise provided in accordance with the Terms and Conditions.

Our contact details are located in the ‘Contact Us’ pages of our website."

The exception (in italics) is a requirement of Britain’s Data Protection Act to ensure that the customer has had it made absolutely clear what he or she is signing up to. Once consent has been given, the exception does not apply, and it is not possible to open an account with Betfair without having given consent.

Increasingly, there are voices in racing saying that Australian racing authorities need to get fair dinkum about the advent of Betfair and betting exchanges 2 , and dismissing these so-called integrity concerns as a furphy. Australian racing administrators ought to embrace exchanges and optimise them for thebenefit of the industry and the punter. The real issue for Australian racing is to ensure that it leadership is responding constructively to future opportunities, rather than pursuing an ideological crusade to preserve the status quo, and ultimately to arrest the alarming decline in racing’s share of the gambling dollar.