Would you bet against these guys? Photo / Getty Images
In part three of his four-part series, Gregor Paul looks at New Zealand’s complicated relationship with sports betting.
Every now and again, someone bets big and wins huge at the TAB in New Zealand.
In 2007, there were two separate, successful $100,000 bets made on the Rugby World Cup at the TAB – one on England to beat Tonga and the other on South Africa to beat Argentina.
In 2008, the TAB recorded its largest single ever bet made on the All Blacks when someone bet $150,000 on them to beat Australia. The odds were $1.48, so when the result went their way, they banked $222,500.
The biggest single sports bet placed with the TAB, however, was made on football, when one punter gambled $225,000 on Brazil to beat China at the 2002 World Cup. Brazil won, paying $1.08, returning just under $250,000.
Interestingly, the TAB is also sitting on the largest bet ever made against the All Blacks, when in 2020 it took $130,000 on the national team to not win this year’s World Cup.
These big bets have carried an element of public fascination and, occasionally, so too have they turned some gamblers into mini celebrities.
Grant Nisbett, who worked as the TAB’s media liaison officer for 24 years, can remember one particular high-roller.
“There was a guy who gained a bit of notoriety and I think it was in 1998 and he was called Steelballs,” says Nisbett. “He had an outstanding year because the All Blacks had a poor year. It was the year the All Blacks lost five test matches and he, on each occasion, had backed the opposition.
“And, of course, the All Blacks always start favourites pretty much regardless of who they are playing and where they are playing. Certainly favourites with the New Zealand TAB, and this guy had an absolute ball backing the opposition.
“My memory is that he also backed Christian Cullen, the horse, to win the New Zealand Trotting Cup and he was betting with quite big money.”
These stories have given weight to the idea that the TAB operates a secret high-rollers club, where it entices those who have previously made big bets into making more and gambling harder.
It’s true that the TAB does have a specialist team of staff in place who monitor and assist customers who are in the organisation’s elite programme.
But TAB managing director Cameron Rodger says that it’s a misconception that most of the customers in the elite programme are an established cohort of professional gamblers being encouraged to take ever greater risks.
“With the way our elite programme works, it is about your activity,” says Rodger. “If you are a customer who is turning over quite a bit in sports and racing then you might fall into that category.
“People might think there is someone assigned to these customers asking them every day if they want to gamble more and more, but it is not like that.
“There is a cohort that have high activity marked next to them and we have got a team that looks at them and what they are doing, separate from other teams.
“I know it is an area people get concerned about because they think we are egging on these customers to spend more, genuinely what most of the customer care revolves around is tech issues, password issues and answering questions about AML – which is money laundering rules – which are rightly becoming tougher and tougher to work through.
“A lot of it is a relationship piece. There are some customers who use our products the most – they are people who engage with our products a lot.
“We don’t use spend as a sole indicator as if someone is a multi-multi millionaire and they spend $1000 on the weekend that is not by itself a harmful activity. But there could be a customer who loses $40 and that’s all they had so that is a big problem.”
In the past few years, one of the new areas for the TAB to manage is the rise of syndicate betting, specifically the Boys Get Paid punter’s club which was launched and managed by chartered accountant Luke Kemeys.
The club began six years ago, says Kemeys, but its origins were accidental. “It started by fluke and for a bit of fun,” says Kemeys.
“We went to a race meet, a group of us as mates, and we put the hat around and everyone put $50 in.
“We bet that on the day and had a bit of fun and I started to wonder whether we could do that at scale. So the next time we did it, people could buy-in online and we put the money into a pot and we ended up with maybe $70,000 I think in the first year.
“We went to our favourite race meet, the Karaka Million at Ellerslie, and bet that on behalf of everyone. We kept them updated throughout the day about how we were going and that scaled. The bets were taken by the TAB.”
Kemeys, who has long followed horse racing, has gained a profile and reputation amongst gamblers.
“How this has come about is that we have a Facebook group that is all focused around horse racing and we have a weekly podcast, which we have done for years.
“People are tuning into that for their alternative commentary of racing and have become more familiar with us. So when we said we were going to launch a punter’s club and feel free to put money in, we had that trust from the stuff we had been doing.”
Kemeys and two of his friends continue to be the decision-makers for the syndicate, deciding on what races and what volumes of money to bet on each race.
And having done so well in its first year, the syndicate has grown in popularity.
“In January this year we had nearly 15,000 people involved, and people were buying a slot or a share through the TAB website and we had more than $1 million to start with,” Kemeys says.
“We have been doing this for six years now and there are three of us who act as an advisory panel. We hope that two out of three of us agree because we go with the majority.
“People have seen this growing, and we hadn’t lost in the first five years and one of the years we doubled the money. But on average we were getting a 40 per cent return
“We didn’t get it right this year, though, and we actually lost about half of the money the TAB made a cool $500,000 out of the syndicate.”
But while the returns, this year aside, have been mostly good, Kemeys says the club is more about fostering a sense of fun and community rather than being all about the money.
“A lot of it is about the camaraderie and being on the course and seeing the big bets and being part of something. So it is about a community and fun is at the heart of it. We are not pretending to be professional gamblers.”
Usyk won the fight by unanimous decision, with all three judges scoring it 116-112.