When the information gives you an unfair advantage over others.
A horse owner, stable lad, vet, doctor, gambler, cricketer, boxer, agent or prime minister's aide, etc, could know material information that is not yet public or known by the bookmaker, betting operator or casino etc.
It's like insider trading, which is unlawful in some jurisdictions because it's seen as unfair to potential investors who don't have access to the same information known to the insider trader. E.g. if no-one but insiders know the company will tomorrow announce a shiny new widget or terrible losses.
A horse's 'form' - its public record of performance - is information available to anyone. No-one betting on the basis of that information has an unfair advantage because anyone can know that information if they care to.
If a given horse's owner perceives it to be performing well on his land, this is not necessarily an advantage because what matters is its performance relative to competitor horses. And any competitor horse might seem better or worse to its owner who might bet on that basis. There's no material advantage while everyone or no-one knows the relative performance.
On the other hand, a horse might have an undisclosed injury or illness, been deliberately slowed in some way, the jockey is bribed to lose or the horse might not run at all - something material known to very few people. As it's much easier to deliberately lose a race (or withdraw before the race begins) than to win the race, no-one involved with a horse is allowed to place lay bets on it (i.e. bet it will lose / bet any other horse will win). There are other betting restrictions depending on job/relationship to the horse - there has been a lot of betting-related corruption in horse racing, including by owners. Professional jockeys aren't allowed to bet on any horse race.
In late April (I don't know about May), before the Prime Minister's announcement in late May of the election date, one betting operator offered 13/2 odds that the 2024 election would occur July-September (and subsequently the PM announced a July election). I.e if you bet £2 you would have won £13. The operator would not have made the same offer if it were public knowledge the election is in July.
It is conceivable that, some days before the PM's public announcement of an election date, a PM's aide knows the month and that this not known to betting operators or the general public.
That the legislation does not define cheating indicates that Parliament expects the meaning of cheating to be common sense, that people will know it when they see it. Also there are myriad circumstances in which cheating may be possible. In Ivey v Genting (see below) the Supreme Court said of section 42:
- ... The section leaves open what is and what is not cheating, as is inevitable given the extraordinary range of activities to which the concept may apply. Plainly, what is cheating in one form of game may be legitimate competition in another. ...
And:
- ... It would be very unwise to attempt a definition of cheating. No doubt its essentials normally involve a deliberate (and not an accidental) act designed to gain an advantage in the play which is objectively improper, given the nature, parameters and rules (formal or informal) of the game under examination. ...
There is very little case law about section 42 because there are only a few 'disposals' each year (disposals include warnings, cautions and prosecutions). It's possible that relatively few cases are even detected.
Then, whittling it down further, I'm not aware of any case based solely on information as opposed to the event being 'fixed' in some way, for example Ivey or the infamous 'spot fixing' by a few members of the Pakistan cricket board and cricket team (see e.g. BBC and Bailii). Also, political betting is a relatively novel and small market and I don't know of any prosecutions related to it - this might the first.
In Ivey v Genting, among other things, the courts discussed the definition of cheating. Ivey had sued a casino that refused to pay him his £7.7 million winnings on the grounds that the casino believed he cheated.
Ivey and another player of a variant of Baccarat, a game of chance with playing cards, made bets based on information unknown at the time to anyone else including the croupier and casino. In essence Ivey had noticed that the rears of some of the decks had subtle irregularities such that, knowing what to look for, high value cards could be distinguished from low value cards. This is the basis of a technique called 'edge-sorting'. With the help of an accomplice and the unwitting help of the croupier, in effect Ivey stacked the shoe, placing bets when it was in his favour and abandoning the game when it wasn't. He didn't deny his actions, he denied they amounted to cheating. The courts disagreed.
On 19 June 2024 it was reported that a police constable working as part of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's protection team has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in a public office for bets related to the timing of the general election.
