Gordon Robinson | The games people play

Government’s latest gaming policy is to merge three Regulatory Commissions, Racing (JRC); Betting Gaming and Lotteries (BGLC); and Casino Gaming (CGC).

It’s a very bad idea.

The thing is, insofar as horseracing and gaming industries are concerned, Governments have done nothing but muck them up for over 50 years. Despite several MPs and cabinet ministers closely involved with horseracing and gaming ever since, the reality has been that these individuals seem not very ofay with the business components of either.

It’s a forgotten fact that National Hero, Norman Washington Manley, was an avid turfite and racehorse owner whose 3yo colt, Roysterer, a Jamaica Derby winner in 1936 at Knutsford Park (now New Kingston), was named after his younger brother Roy who died fighting for King and Empire on a World War I battlefield. The annual Norman Manley Memorial Cup is still run in his honour over Heroes Day weekend. 

Recent MPs who are or were very close to horseracing and gaming include Derrick Smith, also the owner of a Derby winner (Seeking my Dream; 2015); Karl Samuda, breeder of 2022 Derby and two-time Horse of the Year winner, Atomica; and, of course, the versatile, vigilant veteran, Vin Edwards, whose horseracing involvement touched and concerned every aspect including training, owning, breeding and stakeholder representation. Vin was most famous for conditioning legendary sprinter Dye Job whose track record performances have stood the test of time.

But we in musicology knew him as “King” Edwards. Look it up!

But the thing about horseracing is that it’s a sport. Yes, it’s a sporting industry not dissimilar to football, cricket, baseball or Track and Field. Yes, from its inception, horseracing has operated in tandem with gambling. Betting on horseracing has always been big business. But so is betting on football, cricket, baseball, NFL, Track and Field and any other sport you can think of except maybe tiddlywinks or jacks.

Up to 1972, horseracing, the sport, was regulated, copying the British Empire model, by the Jockey Club - a private members club mostly made up of racehorse owners who took the view (and they weren’t very wrong) that, as chief investors in the sport, they should be the ones setting the rules. In USA, NFL still operates under a similar structure where team owners run the sport. Acting collectively as a Board of Governors, they establish the official rulebook; salary cap space; and disciplinary policies. 

I doubt any sport anywhere attracts as much gambling as NFL but the sport is regulated by the Board of Owners while gambling on NFL is regulated by State Gaming Commissions. For years after 1972, when Government decided to replace the Jockey Club with JRC, BGLC (created in 1966 when bookmaking was legalized) and JRC were considered one and Governments carelessly appointed the same boards to control policy and oversight at both. 

But, as the now notorious NaRRA Bill’s critics know, too much concentration of authority can be dangerous, contradictory and/or counter-productive.

JRC’s objects, as set out in section 3 of the JRC Act, are to “regulate and control horseracing and the operation of race courses in the Island.” It regulates a sport NOT a betting industry. It’s true that statutory regulation was considered necessary due to imminent danger of widespread gambling influencing the sport’s integrity but that danger affects all other sports. 

Should football regulation be removed from JFF and placed under the Gaming Commission because gambling on football might influence the integrity of the sport? Should the fact that gambling, doping and other forms of cheating are widespread in every other sport (including chess and bridge) mean that regulation of these sports should be removed from sporting associations and placed under the Gaming Commission?

Of. Course. Not!

So, in or around 1990, Government was made to understand the separate functions of BGLC and JRC and, although the Statutes weren’t altered, separate Boards were appointed for these regulatory agencies. BGLC’s duties, in particular its statutory duty of fiscal JRC oversight, were given the individual attention they deserved instead of, as BGLC was in the past, being seen as a mere JRC adjunct.

It didn’t last. A little more than 10 years later, JRC/BGLC Commission members were again “merged”; often conflicting and always separate public duties were supervised by a single Board; and horseracing and betting on horseracing, lotteries and gaming machines were treated as Siamese Twins.

Oh the games people play now 
every night and every day now; 
never meaning what they say now; 
never saying what they mean

But BGLC’s purpose, as set out in section 4 of the BGLC Act (BGLA) is to “regulate and control the operation of betting and gaming and the conduct of lotteries in the Island” which is very different; very separate from JRC’s mandate. But they’re very connected to CGC’s purposes to the extent that I often wondered why a separate CGC was created in the first place. 

It was patently ludicrous. Laughably, it was considered necessary to specify in section 4 of the Casino Gaming Act that BGLC’s powers weren’t affected by that new Act. CGC’s legislated purpose was “to establish a regulatory scheme for the conduct of casino gaming in Jamaica”. Really? Seriously? Isn’t “casino gaming” just a category of “gaming”? The legal drafting went from the sublime to the ridiculous when “casino gaming licence” was considered necessary to be defined in BGLA but granted by a separate CGC.

While they wile away the hours
in their ivory towers
’til they’re covered up with flowers
in the back of a black limousine 

Lookie here, sport is sport. Gambling is gambling. By all means abolish the congenitally unnecessary CGC and incorporate it within BGLC as a new Gaming Commission. Then we can take as long as our bureaucratic little heart’s desire takes to issue Casino Gaming Licences and regulate Casino Gaming. But keep JRC as a separate entity to regulate the integrity of horseracing so it can focus on enforcing sporting rules; carrying out tasks suited to sports administrators like administering drug testing; acting as appeal panels from race day decisions; and investigating alleged breaches of racing rules.

A Gaming Commission has no time to waste on specialized sport oversight.

In 1968 Games People Play was written, composed, and recorded by American singer/songwriter Joe South. It won the 1970 Grammy Awards for Best Contemporary Song and Song of the Year. In 1969, Bob Andy recorded a magnificent cover that made the song his own but slipped up with one lyric. 

Nobody noticed.

The fundamental problem with the games Government has played for sixty years is, as is always the case in Jamaican governance, we’re already so far behind the ball that we can never catch up no matter how many populist mergers we conceptualize and announce. Forty years ago, BGLC advised Government to consider granting casino licences. We’ve been pussyfooting around the issue ever since because politicians, experts in applying the Doctrine of Doing Nothing, fear the church more than voters. Now that land based casinos are practically obsolete we’re scrambling to create a regulatory framework to introduce them in Jamaica.

In the 21st century, Gaming is conducted virtually. Internet casinos proliferate. The online gambling market is now estimated at almost US$200 billion annually (about 1/3rd of all gambling) and 38% of gamblers gamble online. Like USA petrol prices since the unprovoked attack on Iran that number is increasing daily and unlikely to come back down. If all gaming (including video games) is counted, online gaming accounts for 51% of worldwide gaming revenues and 80% of players. 

Jamaica has played the giddy ass with gaming’s evolution and is now trying to hitch its wagon to a broken down horse. Furthermore Casino gaming regulation isn’t for everybody. It’s unlike any other business activity. Casino gaming regulation requires a high level of expertise in fraud detection and accounting and experience at the (roulette) wheel. If you haven’t played blackjack or poker with pros; pulled a gaming machine handle; have hard knocks experience in the belly of that particular beast; you’re vulnerable to being a target of Malcolm X’s iconic 1963 address “Message to the Grassroots” when he warned black Americans about all politicians, including those from the Democratic Party:  “You been had! You been took! You been hoodwinked! Bamboozled! Led astray! Run amok!”

Peace and Love. 

Gordon Robinson is an attorney-at-law. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com