FootyTAB

In Australian rugby league, FootyTAB is the name of the legal betting agency, operating in both the NRL and the Brisbane Rugby League since betting on league was legalised. Betting is also offered on other games including the pre-season, State of Origin and Test matches.

FootyTAB offers three types of bet, "Pick The Winners", "Pick The Margins", and "Pick The Score".

Pick The Winners

In Pick The Winners, punters are required to select all the winning teams in a round. In order to make selection more difficult, "points start" are given by a panel appointed by the TAB to the team considered less likely to win. So that the scores could never possibly be exactly equal after the start is added, points start are always given as "half points". This points start is summed to the actual score for the match to create a total score and the team with the greater total score is declared the winner. For example in the first round of the 1993 season, the results and total score were as follows:

In recent years as "Pick The Margins" has become more popular, "Pick The Score" has declined considerably.

History

Although there is a lot of evidence that betting on rugby league in Australia has been common ever since the game began in 1908, governments of the period were strongly dedicated to outlawing sports betting and betting on league was thus illegal until the Wran Government legalised it for the 1983 season, in response to the lucrative illegal betting market since race meetings were banned for one week a month during World War II. Betting in the period between the war had always been based on selecting the winners after points start were added, and a report commissioned by the State Government in late 1981 showed that illegal bookmakers were offering set odds for picking the winners of each round and that this allowed these bookmakers to make large profits. Thus it was recommended that a system of legal betting in which dividends offered depended upon the proportion of punters predicting the correct winners was to be preferred. This system was instigated for the 1983 season.

Initially only "Pick The Winners" was offered, but FootyTAB was such a success that it garnered news space in the Sydney Morning Herald rarely allocated to betting on horse or dog racing. Almost eight million dollars was bet on FootyTAB in its first year, and expansion with "Pick The Margins" and "Pick The Score" followed in 1984. The growth of legal betting on league was slow but steady until 1993, but "Pick The Margins" became the chief focus when jackpots were introduced in 1994 and produced much larger prize pools: as a result of two weeks of jackpots, a pool of $1,618,401 was available for the third premiership round that season. With the 20-team competition of 1995 and 1996, "Pick The Margins" prizes reach record levels, in one case exceeding two million dollars after successive jackpots. "Pick The Score", which declined in popularity during this period, was also modified to accommodate higher scores from the 10-metre rule by allowing a "49+" score - which occurred only eleven times between 1984 and 1992.

After the game's rationalisation following the Super League war, "Pick The Margins" dividends declined, and FootyTAB consequently added more points spread, with considerable success as shown by a 1.35 million dollar divident in 2004.

Other developments of FootyTAB since the reunification of rugby league have been multiple bets, in which a punter can select more than one margin or score for a game with bets of more than one dollar.

References

* Middleton, David; "Rugby League 1994"; pp. 23-29. ISBN 0330274899
* Middleton, David; "Rugby League 1995"; p. 122 and p. 159. ISBN 0732251370
* Sydney Morning Herald (various issues)
* Windroos, A. J.; "Introduction of Legal Betting on Rugby League"; in G. Caldwell, B. Haig, M. Dickerson, and L. Sylvan (editors.), "Gambling in Australia", pp. 276-281. ISBN 0949614173