Betting 360 Ep 028: Sean Callander on Poker and In-play betting




Betting 360 - Betting From All Angles show

Summary: Sean Callander has an extensive background in sports and poker journalism, publishing and management. He's been around the gambling arena since poker began to take off in Australia. Over the last few years he's been working on trying to educate our politicians on online poker, in-play betting and other parts of the Interactive Gambling Act. However, he's run into quite a few struggles and quite a lot of ignorance. On this episode, he shares his insider knowledge and his thoughts about the future. Punting Insights You'll Find The quickly changing betting landscape and how it effects you. Why casinos don't have any vested interest in helping the lobby groups. One example of why the battle is a difficult one. What needs to happen for online gambling (and in-play gambling) to be legalized. When the biggest changes will be coming. What separates professional poker players from the rest. Today's Guest: Sean Callander - Monarch Media | Poker Media  Sean's Closing Tip: " Betting on what politicians think can be a pretty bullish thing. " Get the Transcript: Episode 028: Sean Callander on Poker and In-Play betting Welcome to Betting 360, your number one source for horse racing and sports betting insights. Coming around the bend is your host David Duffield, with another expert view to give you the winning edge. David: Hi this is David Duffield, and welcome to another episode of the Betting 360 podcast. My special guest today is Sean Callander, he’s the cofounder of Monarch Media, and pokermedia.com.au, and he’s got a pretty interesting background in sports betting and poker industries. And he’s also got some pretty good insights to share, as he’s part of what you might call a lobby group that’s doing some work in Canberra in an effort to get in-play betting and online poker legalised. So he can give us an update on where things sit there, and the likelihood of success, so let’s have a chat with Sean. David: Thanks for joining me today Sean.   Sean: David great to be with you.   David: Yeah, excellent to have you on the show. And I just wanted to start by letting the listeners know a little bit about your background. If you can just give us a bit of a run through of the roles you’ve had in the industry, and the companies you’ve worked for, and also founded.   Sean: Sure. Well I’m a hard working sports journo, that’s my background. Came up through the cadetship in the UK, worked at the Croydon Advertiser in the southern suburbs of London, up to the Daily Mail. And when I came back to Australia I worked for the Fairfax Group for a number of years, and then lastly with the Australian Football League. I worked on the Footy Record which was a bit of a dream job as you can imagine, and so spent 3 very satisfying years there. And in 2006 along with my now business partner Steven Doyle, we decided to go out on our own, and Steven’s background in management and mine in publishing, we formed our own publishing business called Monarch Media. And early on we identified that there was an opportunity in the game as poker was starting to take off, there was no real poker media here to speak of. And we found it was a niche big enough for us to operate a small business, but not big enough that there was a lot of competition. So over the past 7 years that business has served us really well, we set up Bluff Australasia magazine, which we merged into international organisation called Poker News. And yeah things were flying along in that area until we had some legal pressures, due to the way the Interactive Gaming Act is structured. But we’ve sort of maintained a commitment to poker going forward, we’ve gone off into other areas now, but it’s always going to be very close to our hearts, and you know hopefully we can make a go of it again soon.   David: Yeah you mentioned the legal pressures and the legislative changes. Do you want to just expand on that a little,