Gaming Bourse’s controversial betting exchange site suspended
Tuesday 24th August 2004
Punt2Punt, the betting exchange that caused an outcry by deciding to allow punters to profit from non-runners, has closed down its operations after failing to raise enough money to float on the AIM. The site, operated by the Gaming Bourse, caused controversy recently by announcing it was dropping ‘Rule 4’, which states that money laid on a non-running horse must be returned to the punter. Betting regulators argued that the only people to benefit from this would be those who were laying non-runners through inside information.
Speaking to the Racing Post, David Parker, The Gaming Bourse's marketing director, said: 'Both Google and Virgin launches have shown it is a difficult time -both had to drop their prices - and we did not raise the additional funds.
'The company is currently going through a second phase refinancing and restructure. We only soft launched the site and never hard-launched it and we had not gone head-to-head with Betfair by introducing racing on the site - it was mainly financial markets, football and tennis with racing part of phase two.
The exchange was hoping to raise £5 million from punters in shareholdings for which they received a ten per cent discount on bets. 'All clients' funds are sacrosanct and there is no problem with them,' he added.
