Can Ireland shift to a staff-free betting shop? As a practical matter, that might be a difficult hurdle to get over.
The Irish retail betting industry has dealt with the introduction of a 2 percent tax on turnover over €2.5 million (US$3 million) the lack of a central gambling regulator and the closure of all non-essential shops due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Through it all, fixed costs have remained steady or have risen.
Colm Finlay, founder and director of BetXS told SBC News that 85 to 90 percent of outgoings for traditional shops are fixed. But a focus on variable costs can benefit the land-based sector.
“Needless to say that the self-service, staff less shops operate on a much lower cost basis when compared to their traditional, manned shop counterparts,” Finlay said.
As fixed expenses have increased in Ireland and the U.K. many towns and lack the population base to support shops saddled with such high costs.
“If you look over here in Ireland, it’s not permissible to do single-manning because you’re expected to give your staff breaks after every three of hours of work done. After five hours of work, they are then permitted to take a full hour lunch break. The effect of that is that you can’t really operate a shop on a single-man basis.”
As a result, you require a staff of four or five to keep a betting shop open. From an Irish perspective, that’s €100,000 to €110,000 in costs which are fixed.
“When you then bolt on the €47,000 in fees to media rights holders, the money that has to be paid to landlords and all of the other fixed costs associated with a manned shop, your fixed costs are exceeding the €200,000 mark with a few variable costs,” Finlay said.
With a better revenue share plan in place, costs can drop and more rural communities get betting shops back.
“From a horse racing perspective, that’s great news. The expected revenue in terms of incomes for horse racing and for the Exchequer has dropped to zero. But we’re going to turn those zeros into something.”
BetXS shops in Rathcoole, Kilbeggan and Ballivor are run on a remote basis with many of the tech operations automated and bets placed and settled via self-service betting terminals. Irish land-based shops would benefit from automated betting, Finlay said.
“Betting shops are so well suited to this model. Say if I was to have a shop in Cahersiveen in the ring of Kerry, that shop just has to open up tomorrow. The broadband carries the content from whatever race track or football ground and brings it into these remote locations. Having no carriage of goods is great and it makes betting shops much more suited to automation.”
Advanced facial recognition technology and artificial intelligence can identify and verify the age of a customer, he said.
