|
|
 |
 |
| |
|
How High Rollers stay being VIP
Casino customers |
|
 |
| |
The elegant casino halls of
the last two hundred years have had their expensive carpets paid for and
trodden on by those with deep pockets who they have gone out of their way to
keep as theirs, and not losing them to a rival establishment with equally
glittering baubles. They kept them returning to their venue with the use of
inducements, presents and literally anything money can buy. Flowers,
chocolates, theatre tickets, expensive restaurant meals, holidays and
prostitutes of all persuasions were either obviously thrown at them or quietly
arranged for them. And the honour to top them all was the mere entitlement of
the name VIP. VIP was all they really wanted.
Along Came Digital
Then along came the
digital gambling world and there was a lot of head stratching in back rooms of
casino operators as they thought how to keep their big spending customers from
straying to another digital platform, after all they no longer had to go
somewhere else but they just had to click somewhere else. The answer
unsurprisingly was to do exactly the same as before. Anyone throwing large
amounts of digital currency of whatever sort at the tables, and especially the
losers, were gifted freebies exactly inline with how much they were losing, as
most end up doing.
Yes there are VIP gamblers in the virtual world and
the operations to keep them gambling just got slicker and more and more
efficient. No longer a need for the smarmy hospitality manager in a shiny suit
to get all too loved up with the patrons. No, just a bunch of action analysing
geeks coming up with formulae and behaviour changing techniques to encourage
every last penny out of their deep pockets. Even when they aren't
deep.
Stricter
Rules
So twenty plus years into the
online gambling revolution
the big corporation casinos are richer than ever. Nobody likes that, especially
the public who put the squeeze on politicians, who belately start looking back
at what their predecessors did and start pointing fingers at people who are no
longer there to answer back. Thus we are here. The race is on between the
different factions of politics and government organisations to see who can come
up with new rules for casinos to follow that stops them from rewarding players
for the size of their loses.
This of course is decades overdue. After so
many headline stories of celebrities going tits-up through their gambling
habits and blubbing on TV, whilst promoting their book, the casino operators
have been backed into a corner thinking how to continue doing what they have
been doing whilst showing the regulator that they are not.
The United
Kingdom Gambling Commission is back on their case by asking them for reform. A
bit like asking a dog to eat more slowly. Its going to be tricky to come up
with something that makes genuine economic sense as higher rollers account for
such a large part of UK online
casinos revenue.
High
Rollers
But what about the real high rollers, those with genuine
deep pockets, those who deposit in tens of thousands of pounds and can do so
again the next day, or hour? They want to be treated like they always have and,
in the case of big sports betting punters, need some individual handlers, or
account managers as the trade calls them.
What the UKGC is going to do
soon, with the pushing behind by the government department, the DCMS, is to get
all casinos and bookmakers to verify that their VIP members are genuinely
wealthy individuals. And they can only do that by showing solidly large amounts
of cash sitting somewhere. This is something they do not want to do, especially
when there is a chance that their gambling vendor is forced into telling the
inland revenue of suspicious amounts of cash in the hands of people with no
obvious source of income, like conveyancing solicitors do with dubious house
purchases.
So many a high roller is going to have to think about how to
continue. Perhaps invent an intelectual property business of which they are the
director, which they close down at the end of the year to avoid reporting
results and start up another. Some of course have genuinely big incomes and are
only to happy to tell others about it but most will be reluctant. The best and
mostly likely solution for them is going to be talking to the VIP managers
directly and asking exactly what will constitute compliance with the rules and
how they can make it up together. Probably illegal but none of these people
have been stopped by this in the past. And won't be in the future. |
| |
| |
 |
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
Main Menu
