Trying to shackle the great persuader The two faces of Tom Waterhouse: Bookie and pundit. With four generations of Waterhouse betting in my blood, I know what punters want. It's the cocksure statement that must be ringing in the ears of Tom Waterhouse. On one level, the 30-year-old bookmaker-about-town is correct: he knows what his gambling customers want. Gambling man: Tom Waterhouse comments from the sidelines. They want to pick up the phone or go online to bet on anything from the next race at Kembla Grange to who's going to score the first try between Manly and the Storm. They want to gamble up to the final whistle too, with Waterhouse offering live odds to cater for that. His list of 150,000-plus clients since establishing online in 2010 - and various estimations of the value of his business ranging up to $200 million - is proof he understands and is servicing a market. Concerned: NRL's head of strategic projects, Shane Mattiske. But on another level, Tom Waterhouse totally misunderstood the punters and what they want. He didn't see them coming for him when he bought his way into the inner-sanctum of the Channel Nine commentary team. In modern Aussie parlance, punters are everywhere, not just in the betting ring - and many of them only gamble once a year on the Melbourne Cup Anti-gambling: Independent MP Andrew Wilkie. It's the punters who fill places like Parramatta Stadium, Shark Park and the Sydney Football Stadium, turning up with their children in team beanies and scarves. The punters camp out at Mount Panorama for the Bathurst 1000 or gather around Sydney Harbour for the New Year's Eve fireworks. Politicians and newspaper editors privately talk in terms of whether something will pass the test with punters. They are the everyman and the great unwashed. And in 2013, they are the ones on the couch watching Friday night footy with a laptop or smartphone close enough at hand to vent their spleen when something irritates them. This is where the backlash against Waterhouse in particular, but the infiltration of gambling into the living room in general, began. The tweets on social media appear like clockwork every time Waterhouse is on screen. They fall into two broad categories: Why am I having betting odds shoved down my throat when I just want to watch a game of footy? Why do I have to listen to the expert opinion of someone who has never laced on a football boot in his life? The second is perhaps unfair. Waterhouse, the son of racing queen Gai and bookmaker Robbie, was schooled at the prestigious Sydney GPS school Shore, where he would have learnt a thing or two about rugby union or soccer. But he does concede in his TV commercials to not understanding how first-grade players "take the big hits." By the second round of the NRL competition, a number of online petitions had been launched calling for Waterhouse's removal from the Channel Nine commentary team as the heat grew. When Fairfax Media recently ran a story posing the question whether the 30-year-old was a bookie or a sports pundit, an online poll asking whether his on-air duties should be curtailed received more than 25,000 votes within three hours - 86 per cent of which were for his removal. Having initially tried to sidestep the issue, a high-ranking NRL official this week conceded the line had been "blurred" and the League had stepped in to convince Nine to take the commentary microphone away from Waterhouse. The NRL's head of strategic projects, Shane Mattiske, told a federal parliamentary committee investigating the promotion of gambling in live sport that the NRL had had meetings with Nine to voice its concern about the "integration of sports betting in the opening rounds of the competition." "What you will see in the most recent round and moving forward is a very distinct separation between when someone is talking about sports odds and when the commentary team is talking about the match itself," he told the committee, chaired by the anti-gambling independent MP Andrew Wilkie. The NRL and Nine have tried to maintain a united front on the issue but the cracks showed before the backdown when an NRL source told Fairfax: "They [Nine] must be curled up in the foetal position in the corner not to understand the public feeling against this." Nine executive Scott Briggs said Waterhouse had been relegated to a "discreet segment" due to the public backlash. Waterhouse has steadfastly refused to comment on the issue - before or after he was dropped from the commentary team - and again for this story. The demotion is likely to cut into the revenues of both Nine and the NRL. Both organisations have rejected reports that Waterhouse's sponsorship was worth $15 million to Nine and $50 million over five years to the League, saying the estimates were overblown. What is certain is that Waterhouse has paid much more - some say triple - what the TAB-owned Sportsbet paid to be the NRL's major partner. Waterhouse has also locked in partnership deals with the AFL, the Australian Rugby Union, Cricket Australia and Tennis Australia. Waterhouse won't talk about his media strategy but it is revealed in large part in a current recruitment ad for a "high impact editorial manager" to join his staff on $90,000 a year. "We offer insight into sport, rather than simply offering odds," the ad states. Because of that, and the high profile the Waterhouse name receives, we receive extensive requests for Tom Waterhouse to offer his perspective across all sports nationally and locally. We are looking for an ambitious editorial manager to ... leverage these opportunities to the full, as well as make our editorial output the very best it can be for our punters. Blurred lines indeed. While Waterhouse has worn the backlash, experts say the dangers of allowing the sports betting industry - worth nearly $4.5 billion, according to broker Merrill Lynch - to take root in the family home is greater than one individual, as slick as his pitch may be. Numerous witnesses and submissions to the committee have compared betting promotion with the past tolerance of tobacco and alcohol advertising in Australia. Associate professor Samantha Thomas, the principal research fellow at Wollongong University's centre for health initiatives, said the betting industry would fight as big tobacco had done to stay front and centre in the public consciousness. "Given previous evidence from tobacco and alcohol, it is extremely naive to think that industry will not find alternative strategies to promote their products within sport, and reach and target new audiences," she said. Voluntary industry codes of conduct appear to have had very limited impact on the promotion of gambling during sport, particularly when there are 'exceptions' within these codes which allow advertising during peak audience viewing times. A special exception was given to sports broadcasters to include gambling ads and live odds, even during G-rated times of the day. Briggs told the committee that, on average, 50,000 children watch a Friday night football game on Nine but they were not a "target market" for the advertising. He said the form guide has been included in newspapers for years without controversy. Christopher Hunt, a psychologist at Sydney University's gambling treatment clinic, believes sports betting poses a much greater danger for children. "Sports such as the AFL, NRL and various Olympic sports have traditionally appealed to, and have been marketed towards, children and families in a way that horse and dog racing has not," he said. By normalising wagering associated with these sports, there is a high risk that the prevalence of problem gambling will increase as generations who have grown up with ubiquitous discussions of gambling around sport reach the legal gambling age. The current broadcast industry code of conduct, yet to be ratified by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, was supposed to curb the role of bookmakers as commentators but the gambling reform committee is likely to condemn self-regulation as far too flimsy when it reports in May. As well as Wilkie, the committee includes Nick Xenophon, another outspoken wagering critic, and Labor's Stephen Jones, who delivered a speech in Parliament saying "enough is enough" on the exposure of children to gambling. Waterhouse has been given the opportunity to appear before the gambling reform committee, with the latest offer of a specially convened hearing just for him before the committee retires to report. He has so far declined. Wilkie said of Wednesday's hearing in Sydney: "Both Tom Waterhouse and his organisation were invited to attend but the message came back that they were not available. I take him on his word that he wasn't available. And he may well have been too busy. The rumour in financial circles is that international gaming companies are circling. British bookmaker Ladbrokes considered a bid to buy 50 per cent of the business, it has been reported, but dropped out, leaving Bwin, the sister business of PartyPoker.com, still in the hunt. There is form for foreign poachers, with bookie Con Kafataris making $110 million when he sold Centrebet to the London-listed Sportingbet in 2011. With four generations of Waterhouse betting in his veins, it's probably not a bad bet that the bookie prince will hit the jackpot in the end - commentary microphone in his hand or not.