What's this I hear you say? A punter giving a compliment to a TAB, cannot be correct surely!!
I am referring to their Fixed Odds service and more to the point, the amount of meetings they actually cover and the percentage they bet at. The service is excellent, they have fixed markets in place for a lot of obscure meetings and also incorporate a number of Harness and Greyhound meetings over the course of a week.
Sure there are a few drawbacks that the naysayers will point to such as cutting back bet sizes, etc but lets look at the big picture. Most bookmakers at country meetings bet at around 125-130% nowadays yet UNiTAB are generally around the 115% mark come the jump (can get to under 110% for metro meetings) so have a higher risk element and it is common sense that they won't hold enough on an average country gallops race to even out their book so I completely understand them limiting punters wanting to back a single horse to win a stack. I am quite sure if that same punter went to the same country track and bet with an on course bookie that there wouldn't be much hope of him being set for a great deal more despite betting at a far higher percentage and thus being able to offload the majority of the bet on Betfair or surprise, surprise UNiTAB.
As a trots punter, I am happy for any sort of fixed odds service and glad they are at least providing a service of sorts, sure they could put markets up earlier or hold larger amounts but I am not naive enough to believe that this will actually happen with what they currently hold on those races.
We need to compare apples with apples. They are first and foremost a TAB and therefore should be measured against the same ilk and compared to the service offered by TabCorp and The TOTE, they are the length of the Flemington straight ahead. A few even use the argument that TAB Sportsbet never cut back their bet size yet UNiTAB do but do the TAB cover the same range of meetings or bet outside their own state apart from metropolitan meetings where the turnover is huge. Plus their account base is infinitely higher which obviously allows them to square up their books. I still don't know of anybody who gets their bet size reduced at a metropolitan meeting either with UNiTAB.
Instead of concentrating on the couple of negatives, lets look at the numerous positives from this initiative and I am sure that their client base will grow as word of mouth spreads and thus create stronger betting markets which also by extension will lead to them being able to accept larger wagers on the smaller races.
It won't happen often from me but they do deserve a pat on the back in this instance.
