Hong Kong's back-room bookies go global thanks to online betting
Online gambling has transformed back-room Hong Kong bookies into global business behemoths, many with worrying links to organised crime
In the fragrant environs of the Mong Kok flower market, a florist leans on a delivery truck parked outside his shop, intently studying his smartphone. To the casual passer-by he looks every inch the typical cash-savvy Hong Kong shopkeeper, checking every last cent on the delivery invoice.
"For many low- and middle- class people here, this is the only thing they can do," he said, as he watched a co-worker cut thorns from roses. "What else can they do to get rich? It's a chance they take and, I tell you, 99 per cent of people lose."
Like tens of thousands of others in the city who love a flutter, the florist bets regularly online, even though he knows it's against the law. It has become almost like a mantra that the only place you can bet in Hong Kong is with the Hong Kong Jockey Club and a few licensed mahjong parlours. But it is an increasingly hollow mantra; the age of the internet has opened up a vastly lucrative and largely unregulated virtual world that would make casino mogul Sheldon Adelson blush.
In theory, the florist could go to jail for nine months for breaching the Gambling Ordinance, but he's not worried - the potential rewards are too tempting.
"The odds online are better than with the Jockey Club and they give you a week of credit," he said. "On Monday, they calculate your total. If you don't have the money, they have their own ways of getting it." His upper limit is HK$200,000 a month, he said.
The explosion in online gambling via websites, smartphone applications and online chat platforms has transformed back-room Hong Kong bookies and Macau junket operators into global business behemoths, many of them with deep and worrying links to organised crime, according to gaming regulators and industry watchdogs.