All betting shop operators across the UK made predictions that as soon as the reduction in stakes on their FOBT’s became law, they would start closing betting shops that were negatively affected. Now this time is upon us there appears to have been no closures of betting shops across the UK . . . yet.
Some bookies have stated that they will be monitoring the situation, and will be making decisions as to which betting shops they will be forced to close, if, as predicted, revenue drops substantially enough to make staying open no longer financially viable.
Many betting shop operators have been looking at ways to circumvent the new maximum stake limits imposed on them by the UK Gambling Commission, which has seen a new range of games being made available to players of their fixed odds betting terminals.
With games such as Roulette now having a pre-game gamble type of feature on which players could get to place stakes which are higher than the maximum £2 limit. Such games are experiencing a mixed reception from players.
There is no doubt though, that the number of punters paying visits to betting shops has dropped, but it may be a simple case that to make those betting shops financially viable, bookies will simply readjust their opening hours or will cut back the number of staff they have working in them.
Many bookies are reporting that one-time players of their FOBT’s are simply switching their gambling activities to the much more standard betting opportunities those betting shops offer, including the range of virtual racing games and the number predicting games they offer which start every minute or so throughout the day.
