FootyTAB
Encyclopedia
In Australia
n rugby league
, FootyTAB is the name of the legal betting agency, operating in both the NRL
and the Brisbane Rugby League since betting on league was legalised. Betting is also offered on other games including the pre-season, State of Origin
and Test matches.
FootyTAB offers three types of bet, "Pick The Winners", "Pick The Margins", and "Pick The Score".
are given by a panel appointed by the TAB
to the team considered less likely to win. So that the scores could never possibly be exactly equal after the start is added, points start are always given as half points. This points start is summed to the actual score for the match to create a total score and the team with the greater total score is declared the winner. For example in the first round of the 1993 season, the results and total score were as follows:
For split rounds coinciding with State of Origin matches, "Pick The Winners" and "Pick The Margins" are conducted separately for each week of the split round. However, punters betting on the first week of a split round were also required to bet on the State of Origin match in the appropriate format.
Since the introduction of golden point
to resolve draws in 2003, these points have been taken into account in all forms of FootyTAB betting.
Originally "Pick The Margins" had two point spreads, 1-12 and 13+. However, with the increase of scoring due to the 10-metre rule introduced during 1993 and the popular desire for larger dividends, FootyTAB increased the number of point spreads to three (1-10, 11-20 and 21+) for the 2001 season. Before draws were largely eliminated by extra time in 2003, it was possible also to bet on a match being drawn as a fifth selection.
The larger number of possible selections in "Pick The Margins" has meant that dividends have always been much larger than the modest "Pick The Winners" prizes. It has always been common for no punter to successfully pick every correct margin in a round. Up until the end of 1993, prizes were paid when this occurred to punters with one or even two incorrect selections. However, on 7 March 1994, FootyTAB announced Pick The Margins prizemoney would jackpot
unless some punter selected every correct margin in a round. However, if no one selected all correct margins in the last week of "Pick The Margins" beeting for a season, then prizes would be (and are still) paid out to the punter with the most correct margins since the jackpot began.
Jackpots brought about a major increase in the popularity of "Pick The Margins" betting so that it became the most popular type of bet on rugby league in Australia. Today, "Pick The Margins" prizes are usually greater than the largest available from betting on horse racing
, with the record being $2,006,217 awarded to one punter after three successive jackpots on 8 July 1996. (it is noteworthy that this punter only won as a result of a last minute Sydney City
penalty goal).
and previously the ABC
only. As rounds became spread over a greater number of days, the number of games on which "Pick The Score" was available increased.
Dividends in "Pick The Score", though higher than for "Pick The Winners", are not usually as high as "Pick The Margins" because each game is a separate prize. Although there have been some cases where no correct entry has been drawn - usually occurring where a losing team scored an odd number of points through kicking a field goal before the opposition scored several tries
, there have never been jackpots on "Pick The Score", presumably because of the difficulty of selecting an appropriate game to jackpot a pool to. In cases where nobody selected a game's full-time score, prizes have been paid out to those punters who were closest, as in the following examples:
In recent years as "Pick The Margins" has become more popular, "Pick The Score" has declined considerably.
and betting on league was thus illegal until the Wran Government
legalised it for the 1983 season, in response to the lucrative illegal betting market since race meetings were banned for one week a month during World War II
. Betting in the period between the war had always been based on selecting the winners after points start were added, and a report commissioned by the State Government in late 1981 showed that illegal bookmaker
s were offering set odds for picking the winners of each round and that this allowed these bookmakers to make large profits. Thus it was recommended that a system of legal betting in which dividends offered depended upon the proportion of punters predicting the correct winners was to be preferred. This system was instigated for the 1983 season.
Initially only "Pick The Winners" was offered, but FootyTAB was such a success that it garnered news space in the Sydney Morning Herald rarely allocated to betting on horse or dog racing
. Almost eight million dollars was bet on FootyTAB in its first year, and expansion with "Pick The Margins" and "Pick The Score" followed in 1984. The growth of legal betting on league was slow but steady until 1993, but "Pick The Margins" became the chief focus when jackpots were introduced in 1994 and produced much larger prize pools: as a result of two weeks of jackpots, a pool of $1,618,401 was available for the third premiership round that season. With the 20-team competition of 1995 and 1996, "Pick The Margins" prizes reach record levels, in one case exceeding two million dollars after successive jackpots. "Pick The Score", which declined in popularity during this period, was also modified to accommodate higher scores from the 10-metre rule by allowing a 49+ score - which occurred only eleven times between 1984 and 1992.
After the game's rationalisation following the Super League
war, "Pick The Margins" dividends declined, and FootyTAB consequently added more points spread, with considerable success as shown by a 1.35 million dollar dividend in 2004.
Other developments of FootyTAB since the reunification of rugby league have been multiple bets, in which a punter can select more than one margin or score for a game with bets of more than one dollar.
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n rugby league
Rugby league
Rugby league football, usually called rugby league, is a full contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular grass field. One of the two codes of rugby football, it originated in England in 1895 by a split from Rugby Football Union over paying players...
, FootyTAB is the name of the legal betting agency, operating in both the NRL
National Rugby League
The National Rugby League is the top league of professional rugby league football clubs in Australasia. The NRL's main competition, called the Telstra Premiership , is contested by sixteen teams, fifteen of which are based in Australia with one based in New Zealand...
and the Brisbane Rugby League since betting on league was legalised. Betting is also offered on other games including the pre-season, State of Origin
Rugby League State of Origin
State of Origin is an annual best of three series of rugby league football matches contested by the Maroons and the Blues, who represent the Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales respectively...
and Test matches.
FootyTAB offers three types of bet, "Pick The Winners", "Pick The Margins", and "Pick The Score".
Pick The Winners
In Pick The Winners, punters are required to select all the winning teams in a round. In order to make selection more difficult, points startHandicapping
Handicapping, in sport and games, is the practice of assigning advantage through scoring compensation or other advantage given to different contestants to equalize the chances of winning. The word also applies to the various methods by which the advantage is calculated...
are given by a panel appointed by the TAB
Totalizator Agency Board
Totalisator Agency Board in Australia and New Zealand, universally shortened to TAB, is the name given to monopoly totalisator organisations. All were originally government owned...
to the team considered less likely to win. So that the scores could never possibly be exactly equal after the start is added, points start are always given as half points. This points start is summed to the actual score for the match to create a total score and the team with the greater total score is declared the winner. For example in the first round of the 1993 season, the results and total score were as follows:
| Home team | Points start | Away team | Points start | Match score | "Pick The Winners" score | FootyTAB winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canberra Canberra Raiders The Canberra Raiders are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in the national capital city of Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. They have competed in Australasia's elite rugby league competition, the National Rugby League premiership since 1982... |
St. George St. George Dragons The St George Dragons was an Australian Rugby league football club in St George, Sydney, New South Wales that played in Australia's top-level Rugby league competition from New South Wales Rugby Football League in 1921 until 1998; in 1999 they formed a joint venture with the Illawarra Steelers,... |
7.5 | Canberra 8 St. George 22 |
Canberra 8 St. George 29.5 |
St. George | |
| Balmain Balmain Tigers The Balmain Tigers are a rugby league football club based in the inner-western Sydney suburb of Balmain. They were a founding member of the New South Wales Rugby League and one of the most successful in the history of the premiership, with eleven titles... |
6.5 | Canterbury | Balmain 14 Canterbury 19 |
Balmain 20.5 Canterbury 19 |
Balmain | |
| Newcastle Newcastle Knights The Newcastle Knights are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in Newcastle, New South Wales. They compete in Australasia's premier rugby league competition, the National Rugby League premiership... |
Easts Sydney Roosters The Sydney Roosters are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney. The club competes in the National Rugby League and is one of the oldest and most successful clubs in Australian rugby league history, having won twelve New South Wales Rugby League... |
5.5 | Newcastle 10 Easts 20 |
Newcastle 10 Easts 25.5 |
Easts | |
| Norths North Sydney Bears The North Sydney Bears are an Australian rugby league football club based in North Sydney, New South Wales. They currently compete in the New South Wales Cup, having exited the National Rugby League following the 1999 NRL season after 92 years of top-grade competition. The Bears are based on... |
1.5 | Manly | Norths 19 Manly 4 |
Norths 20.5 Manly 4 |
Norths | |
| Penrith Penrith Panthers The Penrith Panthers are an Australian professional rugby league football team based in the western Sydney suburb of Penrith. They compete in the National Rugby League premiership, the top rugby league football competition in Australasia. For the 2012 NRL season they will be coached by Ivan... |
Parramatta Parramatta Eels The Parramatta Eels are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in the Sydney suburb of Parramatta. The Parramatta District Rugby League Football Club was formed in 1947, with their First Grade side playing their first season in the New South Wales Rugby Football League... |
8.5 | Penrith 10 Parramatta 11 |
Penrith 10 Parramatta 18.5 |
Parramatta | |
| Cronulla Cronulla Sharks The Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks are Australian professional Rugby league team based in Cronulla, in the Sutherland Shire, Southern Sydney, New South Wales... |
9.5 | Brisbane Brisbane Broncos The Brisbane Broncos are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in the city of Brisbane, the capital of the state of Queensland. Founded in 1988, the Broncos play in Australasia's elite competition, the National Rugby League premiership. They have won six premierships and two... |
Cronulla 10 Brisbane 19 |
Cronulla 19.5 Brisbane 19 |
Cronulla | |
| Wests Western Suburbs Magpies The Western Suburbs Magpies are an Australian rugby league football club based in the western suburbs of Sydney, New South Wales. Formed in 1908, Wests, as they are commonly referred to, were one of the nine foundation clubs of the first New South Wales Rugby League competition in Australia... |
Gold Coast | 9.5 | Wests 14 Gold Coast 10 |
Wests 14 Gold Coast 19.5 |
Gold Coast | |
| Illawarra Illawarra Steelers The Illawarra Steelers are an Australian rugby league football club based in the city of Wollongong, New South Wales. The club competed in Australia's top-level Rugby League competition from 1982, when they, along with the Canberra Raiders, were admitted into the then New South Wales Rugby Football... |
Souths South Sydney Rabbitohs The South Sydney Rabbitohs are an Australian professional rugby league football team based in Redfern, a suburb of South-central Sydney, New South Wales. They participate in the National Rugby League premiership and are one of nine existing teams from the state capital... |
5.5 | Illawarra 19 Souths 0 |
Illawarra 19 Souths 5.5 |
Illawarra | |
For split rounds coinciding with State of Origin matches, "Pick The Winners" and "Pick The Margins" are conducted separately for each week of the split round. However, punters betting on the first week of a split round were also required to bet on the State of Origin match in the appropriate format.
Since the introduction of golden point
Golden point
The golden point, a sudden death overtime system, is used to resolve drawn rugby league football matches. The term is borrowed from soccer's now defunct golden goal.-Australasia:...
to resolve draws in 2003, these points have been taken into account in all forms of FootyTAB betting.
Pick The Margins
In "Pick The Margins", punters are required to select the results of every game played during a round. This involved determining who will win and by what margin they will win. For "Pick The Margins", points start given by FootyTAB are not considered. Thus, using the points spreads then current, the correct results for the opening round of 1993 would have been:| Home team | Score | Away team | Score | FootyTAB margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canberra | 8 | St. George | 22 | St. George 13+ |
| Balmain | 14 | Canterbury | 19 | Canterbury 1-12 |
| Newcastle | 10 | Easts | 20 | Easts 1-12 |
| Norths | 19 | Manly | 4 | Norths 13+ |
| Penrith | 10 | Parramatta | 11 | Parramatta 1-12 |
| Cronulla | 10 | Brisbane | 19 | Brisbane 1-12 |
| Wests | 14 | Gold Coast | 10 | Wests 1-12 |
| Illawarra | 19 | Souths | 0 | Illawarra 13+ |
Originally "Pick The Margins" had two point spreads, 1-12 and 13+. However, with the increase of scoring due to the 10-metre rule introduced during 1993 and the popular desire for larger dividends, FootyTAB increased the number of point spreads to three (1-10, 11-20 and 21+) for the 2001 season. Before draws were largely eliminated by extra time in 2003, it was possible also to bet on a match being drawn as a fifth selection.
The larger number of possible selections in "Pick The Margins" has meant that dividends have always been much larger than the modest "Pick The Winners" prizes. It has always been common for no punter to successfully pick every correct margin in a round. Up until the end of 1993, prizes were paid when this occurred to punters with one or even two incorrect selections. However, on 7 March 1994, FootyTAB announced Pick The Margins prizemoney would jackpot
Progressive jackpot
A progressive jackpot is a jackpot for a gaming machine where the value of the jackpot increases a small amount for every game played...
unless some punter selected every correct margin in a round. However, if no one selected all correct margins in the last week of "Pick The Margins" beeting for a season, then prizes would be (and are still) paid out to the punter with the most correct margins since the jackpot began.
Jackpots brought about a major increase in the popularity of "Pick The Margins" betting so that it became the most popular type of bet on rugby league in Australia. Today, "Pick The Margins" prizes are usually greater than the largest available from betting on horse racing
Horse racing
Horse racing is an equestrian sport that has a long history. Archaeological records indicate that horse racing occurred in ancient Babylon, Syria, and Egypt. Both chariot and mounted horse racing were events in the ancient Greek Olympics by 648 BC...
, with the record being $2,006,217 awarded to one punter after three successive jackpots on 8 July 1996. (it is noteworthy that this punter only won as a result of a last minute Sydney City
Sydney Roosters
The Sydney Roosters are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney. The club competes in the National Rugby League and is one of the oldest and most successful clubs in Australian rugby league history, having won twelve New South Wales Rugby League...
penalty goal).
Pick The Score
In "Pick The Score", punters are required to predict the exact number of points a team will score in a match. "Pick The Score" has typically been available on matches televised on Channel 9Nine Network
The Nine Network , is an Australian television network with headquarters based in Willoughby, a suburb located on the North Shore of Sydney. For 50 years since television's inception in Australia, between 1956 and 2006, it was the most watched television network in Australia...
and previously the ABC
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
only. As rounds became spread over a greater number of days, the number of games on which "Pick The Score" was available increased.
Dividends in "Pick The Score", though higher than for "Pick The Winners", are not usually as high as "Pick The Margins" because each game is a separate prize. Although there have been some cases where no correct entry has been drawn - usually occurring where a losing team scored an odd number of points through kicking a field goal before the opposition scored several tries
Try
A try is the major way of scoring points in rugby league and rugby union football. A try is scored by grounding the ball in the opposition's in-goal area...
, there have never been jackpots on "Pick The Score", presumably because of the difficulty of selecting an appropriate game to jackpot a pool to. In cases where nobody selected a game's full-time score, prizes have been paid out to those punters who were closest, as in the following examples:
| Date of match | Home team | Away team | Match score | Scores to which "Pick The Score" prize paid out |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 June 1988 | Balmain | Canberra | Balmain 15, Canberra 39 | Balmain 14, Canberra 39 Balmain 16, Canberra 39 |
| 8 May 1994 | Manly | Brisbane | Manly 21, Brisbane 11 | Manly 21, Brisbane 10 Manly 21, Brisbane 12 |
In recent years as "Pick The Margins" has become more popular, "Pick The Score" has declined considerably.
History
Although there is a lot of evidence that betting on rugby league in Australia has been common ever since the game began in 1908, governments of the period were strongly dedicated to outlawing sports bettingSports betting
Sports betting is the activity of predicting sports results and placing a wager on the outcome.-United States of America:Aside from simple wagers such as betting a friend that one's favorite baseball team will win its division or buying a football "square" for the Super Bowl, sports betting is...
and betting on league was thus illegal until the Wran Government
Neville Wran
Neville Kenneth Wran, AC, CNZM, QC was the Premier of New South Wales from 1976 until 1986. He was National President of the Australian Labor Party from 1980 to 1986 and Chairman of both the Lionel Murphy Foundation and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation from 1986...
legalised it for the 1983 season, in response to the lucrative illegal betting market since race meetings were banned for one week a month during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Betting in the period between the war had always been based on selecting the winners after points start were added, and a report commissioned by the State Government in late 1981 showed that illegal bookmaker
Bookmaker
A bookmaker, or bookie, is an organization or a person that takes bets on sporting and other events at agreed upon odds.- Range of events :...
s were offering set odds for picking the winners of each round and that this allowed these bookmakers to make large profits. Thus it was recommended that a system of legal betting in which dividends offered depended upon the proportion of punters predicting the correct winners was to be preferred. This system was instigated for the 1983 season.
Initially only "Pick The Winners" was offered, but FootyTAB was such a success that it garnered news space in the Sydney Morning Herald rarely allocated to betting on horse or dog racing
Greyhound racing
Greyhound racing is the sport of racing greyhounds. The dogs chase a lure on a track until they arrive at the finish line. The one that arrives first is the winner....
. Almost eight million dollars was bet on FootyTAB in its first year, and expansion with "Pick The Margins" and "Pick The Score" followed in 1984. The growth of legal betting on league was slow but steady until 1993, but "Pick The Margins" became the chief focus when jackpots were introduced in 1994 and produced much larger prize pools: as a result of two weeks of jackpots, a pool of $1,618,401 was available for the third premiership round that season. With the 20-team competition of 1995 and 1996, "Pick The Margins" prizes reach record levels, in one case exceeding two million dollars after successive jackpots. "Pick The Score", which declined in popularity during this period, was also modified to accommodate higher scores from the 10-metre rule by allowing a 49+ score - which occurred only eleven times between 1984 and 1992.
After the game's rationalisation following the Super League
Super League
Super League is the top-level professional rugby league football club competition in Europe. As a result of sponsorship from engage Mutual Assurance the competition is currently officially known as the engage Super League. The League features fourteen teams: thirteen from England and one from...
war, "Pick The Margins" dividends declined, and FootyTAB consequently added more points spread, with considerable success as shown by a 1.35 million dollar dividend in 2004.
Other developments of FootyTAB since the reunification of rugby league have been multiple bets, in which a punter can select more than one margin or score for a game with bets of more than one dollar.