Tag Archives: betting

Opinion: The Betting Industry and Animal Welfare

By David Warren | Tue 26th May 2015 - 8:55 am

The proliferation of betting shops in our high streets and the associated issue of the amounts gambled on high stakes gaming machines have been the subject of intense political debate recently.

The welfare of animals in the betting industry, I am thinking in particular of racehorses, receives a lot less interest.

I have always been a very strong supporter of the rights of animals, but having developed a keen interest in horseracing a few years ago, I started to examine much more closely the treatment of the non-human participants in what is a multi-billion pound industry.

Horseracing is an international sport, with the top competitors going long distances to chase big prizes.

Two of the big welfare issues are the use of the whip and races that involve jumping over obstacles.

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged animal welfare and horse racing | 10 Comments

What do the academics say? Using betting markets to predict election outcomes

By Mark Pack | Tue 10th January 2012 - 9:55 am

Welcome to the latest in our occasional series highlighting interesting findings from academic research. Today it is a study into how good, or not, the betting markets are at predicting the results of elections.

A few years ago, when spread betting on election results first became popular, there was a brief period when the state of betting markets was touted as a good guide to election results. The theory was that when people decide whether or not to stake their money on a bet they are revealing what they really think, in the way that public comments often do not. Moreover, …