Listed UK company, BetBrokers, the firm you were supposed to use if you struggled to get bets on yourself, went into administration last Friday. The peculiar business model always had its doubters (big bookies close down winners, so most end up on Betfair anyway. Do you think bookies really want to take bigbets from unnamed accounts?) and in the end, those doubts won through. But perhaps it was just shabbily run. It wouldn't be the first occasion that a good idea was ruined by people not knowing how to run a business properly.
According to this report , IPL tournaments so far have been rife with spot-fixing - that is fixing minor elements of the game - runs in a single over, number of wides bowled etc. The curious part of that article is that the Income Tax department are supposed to have found these crimes. What idiot would be stupid enough to put down 'big wad of cash handed to me by bookie' as a source of income? Backhanders for sportsmen, particularly in a celebrity- and cricket-obsessed culture like India are not rare. They could come from anything like turning up to open someone's new business (not a sponsor, but a 'friend of a friend' arrangement), to being a guest at some devoted fan's dinner party etc. The opportunities are always there, and there will always be people trying to become friends with players and their entourage - that is human nature. This form of match-fixing (and it's not really fixing a match, just a minor element of it) is very hard to prove, but also, ...
I believe you are correct when you say it was shabbily run. Certain board members were pretty cueless. In an interview on the Interactive investor website, their CEO
ReplyDelete(the only Execiutive Director)shows a distinct lack of judgement and knowledge about the gaming business. He doesn't even seem to understand that gambling is illegal in most of the USA. He also has a history of failure on the AIM market as well. Affinity Internet Holdings, the company he promotes as being his great success on the Betbrokers website, went into administration with, apparently, a big hole in the accounts! One of their Non-exec directors is no better. Non- Exec Derek Tullett, is a septugenarian who (according to the BB website) is Chairman of New9to5.com. Is it wise for Tullett to brag about this? Not really, the company went bust sometime ago, but presumably Tullett is not aware of this because if he was, surely he would not be stupid enough to publicise his involvment when the company has gone into liquidation without filing accounts. It seems that there should be little surprise that Betbrokers failed if this is the calibre of people they had running the show. If I were a shareholder I would really want to know what sort of business they were running. For a stock to go from 15p to a fifth of a penny is a shocking performance over less than two years since admission to the markets. Surely there should be questions regarding the original valuation, as their shares only moved one way from day one. A very bad smell about this whole affair.