He asked us not to use his name, then spent three hours telling stories that make anonymity pointless to anyone who stood in the Moonee Valley ring in the nineties. We'll call him M.
M's first day as a licensed bookmaker was a wet Wednesday in 1994. He lost eleven thousand dollars and drove home, he says, 'happier than I'd ever been in my life. I was in the game.'
What changed
'The phones killed the walk-up punter, the data killed the mug price, and the corporates killed the ring. In that order.' M says the modern on-course bookie survives on service and theatre: 'People bet with me for the same reason they buy records. It feels like something.'
The sharpest change, he says, is information symmetry. 'In 1995 I knew things the crowd didn't. Now the kid with the phone knows things I don't. The margin used to be knowledge. Now it's nerve.'
