Sport is made for betting

... to be broken by News of the World at 2215 GMT. Front and back page apparently. You think these overpaid prats would learn one day. Nope, it's Ashley Cole again, allegedly shooting someone. Speculation that it's anyone from a Chelsea backroom staff member to a 21yo fan. And with something as 'soft' as an air rifle. So next information to break will be that they were out paintballing or something lame like that?

Another broker says sell, another week of dreadful unplanned site outages, another marketing campaign criticised by the Advertising Standards Authority.... It's not looking good for Betfair shareholders, now trading in the 850p range, getting dangerously close to half their market peak of 1610p just a few months ago. The Cricket World Cup is underway and Cheltenham's just around the corner - a few folks in the ivory tower will be praying for some record figures, otherwise there has to be some blood spilling from the board room soon as the value of the company continues to slide.

When I was at high school, I fancied the idea of being a lawyer, probably from watching too much LA Law. Once I got to uni I realised it was never going to happen and soon changed my career plans (which I then did a few more times before stumbling into the betting industry, an option I never thought possible as a youngster). All the paperwork and tedium of law put me right off it, not to mention the work involved when all I wanted to do was enjoy my first years in a big city. But the idea of being a judge, having a platform to tell people they are fuckwits and should be punished for it is much more appealing. Particularly when their defence is simply pathetic and should be laughed out of court. Take the front page of today's Racing Post , the case of experienced veterinarian James Main, who admitted injecting one of Nicky Henderson's horses with a banned blood-clotting agent on raceday back in 2009. Henderson was banned for three months as a result. Main's case was ...

No marvellous green book to show off this year, although it was a decent profit on turnover considering how little liquidity was on Betfair. Being on Premier Sports for the first time didn't help since very few people have subscribed to it, plus the Betfair site has been dodgier than the BBC's 'The Real Hustle' recently. It was easy enough to get a live stream but I doubt many others would have bothered. It's not the most popular sport outside of the US anyway, and also having to deal with a toddler who didn't want to go to bed before 11pm made it incredibly difficult to trade! I'd emptied most of my acct recently, so I'm more than happy with a £45 green book from a £60 balance. Same old theory for low liquidity, many runner events. Just keep putting up half-decent offers for small stakes. Increase the size of the lays as you create more green on the other runners. Don't get over-competitive (let someone else jump ahead of you in the queue if they...

Glad to see the rescheduled meeting going ahead at Newbury tomorrow. Awful scenes last Saturday with the freak electrocution of two horses before the first race. You just can't write procedures in a manual to deal with something as bizarre and unexpected as that. Criticising the officials for running the first race after that is easy in hindsight. One thing that British racing needs to get right though is its professionalism. Jockey Hadden Frost on Tuesday went for home a lap early in a three-mile chase and then ended up with egg on his face when crossing the finish line only meant he had a lap left to go. The jockey made a mistake, fair enough. But to let him off with just a slap on the wrist isn't good enough. This is a professional industry. Punters lost tens of thousands on that horse across the country; they get nothing back for his incompetence. Stewards said the penalty range for this infringement was just 10-14 days, so he got the midpoint of 12 days. Soft as butter. ...

Two games played in an international friendly double-header at a Turkish resort, none of the teams involved are ranked in the FIFA Top 50, and no local representation either. Gee, doesn't sound fishy at all. Oh, and all SEVEN goals across the two matches were from penalties.... FIFA to probe friendly matches FIFA have opened an investigation into last Wednesday's international friendly double-header in Antalya after heavy betting was discovered following the award of seven penalties in the two games. Bulgaria and Estonia played out a 2-2 draw hours after Latvia had beaten Bolivia 2-1 at the Turkish resort, with all seven goals coming from the spot.

You seriously have to wonder where the brains department of Betfair have disappeared to. A TV campaign based around the theme 'cut out the middleman'. Look it up in the dictionary - Betfair are the irrefutable definition of the word: mid·dle·man     [mid-l-man] –noun, plural -men. 1. a person who plays an economic role intermediate between producer and retailer or consumer. 2. a person who acts as an intermediary. So what else do Betfair do then?? The Advertising Standards Authority yesterday banned the ad after a series of complaints, stating that the advert was misleading and conveniently forgot to mention they take out a commission.

Former jockey Dean McKeown was as bent as a three-bob note and was warned off British racecourses in 2008 for his role in pulling up 11 horses trained by Paul Blockley. He is guilty, that part is etched in stone. Yet ATR presenter Sean Boyce is facing defamation charges for calling a spade a spade, or in this case, a crook a crook. McKeown's efforts on Rascal in the Mix in November 2008 when fulfilling a previously booked mount before his ban took effort were abysmal. It was a hook job and Boyce was not afraid to call it as it was. McKeown took a battering in the phone interview before eventually hanging up. The High Court, and in particular, Justice Tugendhat, have shown how ridiculous the law is by allowing McKeown to sue one of a select few racing media men who have the balls to rid the world of ambiguous bullshit and cut to the facts of the matter. Four years isn't enough for McKeown, people like this should never be allowed to return to the industry. Sent from my...

It's not a good sign for the innocence of the world if even sumo wrestling is facing match-fixing problems.... Sumo wrestling rocked by match-fixing scandal The head of Japan's sumo association has apologised to fans after it was revealed wrestlers may have been fixing matches. In some of the text messages uncovered by police, wrestlers would tell their opponents what to expect inside the ring while others would instruct their rivals to throw a match. One wrestler texted another: "You fall when I move to tackle." It is just the latest scandal to tarnish this ancient sport, with dozens of wrestlers last year admitting to placing illegal bets on baseball with the Japanese mafia. A culture where gambling is illegal, the participants like a bet on other sports with the black market bookies and then they get blackmailed into throwing matches so they aren't exposed for breaking the law... (Cheers to Richard Farmer for the link)

Could sport be fighting back against the corrupt individuals who wish to poison their respective games to line their own pockets? Encouraging signs this week with cricket and rugby league both acting to stem the tide. In cricket, first the British Crown Prosecution Service announced it was charging the three Pakistan cricketers with obtaining and accepting corrupt payments, and conspiracy to cheat. Bear in mind that the CPS was the authority who were laughed out of court when trying to convict leading jockey Kieran Fallon of pulling horses a few years ago. Let's hope they've got their act together since then. Long drawn out cases which ultimately fail ruin reputations and make lawyers rich. A day later, the ICC have come down hard on the three players, with minimum suspensions of five years. Expect appeals from each player pleading their innocence first, and then for leniency. There's legs in this case yet, but it's encouraging to see the ICC impose serious penal...

I love listening to managers like Arsene Wenger moaning about referees and anything else they can blame their problems on.... How do you explain this one Voyeur? Arsenal led 3-0 after 10 mins and 4-0 at half-time. Newcastle scored four times in the second half to draw level. Final result 4-4. Over £1m matched at 1.01/1.02.... That's a gubbing of enormous proportions... (Voyeur is a Special1TV reference if you were wondering)

News today that the governor of New Jersey has signed a bill permitting exchange betting within the state. It's not a given for Betfair or any other company trying to operate a betting exchange on horse racing, it just allows the possibility of such betting platforms. I posted a whole batch of reasons a month ago why investors in particular shouldn't be counting their chickens just yet. Here's the story from US racing bible, the Daily Racing Form. New Jersey governor Christie signs exchange-betting bill New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie signed bills on Monday that will legalize exchange wagering and a new method of pooling parimutuel wagers, the governor's office said on Monday. Both bills were supported by elements of the racing industry as the state continues to pursue ways to help the state's beleaguered gambling industries. Christie also vetoed a bill on Monday that supporters said would streamline the process by which offtrack betting locations are approv...