Sport is made for betting

Item in today's RP suggests FIFA are considering banning in-play betting on football over corruption fears. 'What a great idea' will say the do-gooders and Daily Mail readers who don't have a clue about the outside world. Any knowledge of betting in football will let you swiftly decide this is the stupidest idea since awarding the World Cup to a country which bans alcohol and homosexuality, doesn't even have to hotel capacity to cater for one full stadium of visitors and will be 45-50C during July. Mark Davies has written an excellent post on it here - UEFA and FIFA: focus, please! If bookmakers offer 'micro-betting', markets on tiny events during the match such as next free kick or next throw-in, who is taking the risk? The bookie. What is a bookie's job to do? Manage risk. What happens when people fall out of trees to back one option in a multi-selection, reasonably random market? They shut it off and investigate, maybe even alerting sporting autho

The Horsemen's Group in British racing put their head above the parapet last week and made a stand - encouraging trainers to boycott any races where prizemoney did not meet the recommended amount. Big name stables such as Godolphin and Richard Hannon backed them, announcing they were prepared to support the policy, even going as far as boycotting events/tracks where they were traditionally successful. By Friday, there was 'no chance' of the Horsemen's Group weakening its stance and compromising on tariff values... but by Monday, their backbone had disappeared. Obviously there are two sides to the argument here - it did seem a little bizarre that tariff rates were going to affect major races, surely the prestige of those races makes up for falling a few grand short of a number generated on some spreadsheet. After all, if you want to increase prizemoney at the bottom of the industry, where the majority of horses, owners, trainers and staff operate, a thin slice off the

I haven't followed this whole story, but this really is bizarre. A proper lotteries company with a local monopoly should be a licence to print money.... Sazka board declares insolvency Prague, March 22 (CTK) - The board of Czech lottery operator Sazka said the company is in insolvency and asked its chairman Ales Husak to file an insolvency petition on the firm or join the previous one filed by deputy chairman Roman Jecminek, server iHNed.cz said yesterday. Surely there's more to this than meets the eye...

With confidence that the shambolic pre-Cheltenham site crashes are over now their servers are fully operational in Gibraltar, Betfair's share price has started to climb again. It has been helped today with a case win in the Netherlands , part of a long, protracted battle against the monopolistic Dutch government who refused to consider their licence application. Whether that eventually turns into permission to take bets from Dutch residents is another matter, but it's a start... Betfair stocks were trading at 935p this afternoon, on a steady rise from around 870p early in the week.

Bloody new job, virtually missed everything! Went on Tuesday but barely had a bet outside of that. Poor planning on my part, although it did save me quite a bit of money.... that's not really the point of Cheltenham though is it?

I got you, do-do-doo....... sang the legendary James Brown. England suffer deep embarrassment again. Not only losing to Bangladesh, but looking gone (traded at 10), taking quick wickets to trade 1.03, and then screwing it up! Great death bowling from James Anderson - from Cricinfo Just to add to the tension it's batting Powerplay time. Fielders have to come in 33 needed from 30. Bangladesh have it all to do. Prayers from the crowd... 45.1 Anderson to Mahmudullah, 5 wides, ...are answered here! Heady stuff for the Bangladeshis as Anderson spears this down the leg side, off it went past Prior and skimmed away for five wides! 45.1 Anderson to Mahmudullah, 1 run, down the leg side again, Mahmudullah clips classily to deep square. What a better option he is than Ashraful 45.2 Anderson to Shafiul Islam, 1 run, push and go from Shafiul! Very smart, just sat back, dropped it to mid-off and hared down the other end. The single is greeted with jumping ovations from the crowd 45.3 A

No great surprises here as the Betfair share price continued to slide, they needed to do something. Sources told me that a Gibraltar office was being fitted out several weeks ago in preparation for the move, which shocked nobody. Do Betfair deserve to be singled out for criticism in moving their betting operations (but very few of their staff) to Gibraltar? No, they're not the first grandmother-selling company to do it, but hopefully they'll be the last. Word is that the DCMS are close to announcing new regulations for gambling operators targetting the UK - pay the full amount of tax (and hopefully levy) that a fully UK-based firm pays or you will not be allowed to advertise within the UK. In theory, this should raise questions re European law, but other countries such as France and Italy have managed it, so now is the time for the UK government to show their muscle (though hopefully not William Hague - he couldn't scare a kitten). And after that, it wouldn't be suc

Excuse me while I piss myself, over and over again. The greatest gubbing of all time. That's over £8 million traded at 1.04 or shorter. Almost £5 million at 1.02 or shorter. £2.7m matched at 1.01. England, fresh from possibly the best ODI of all-time, the 338 runs apiece tie with India on Sunday. They scored 327 off 50 overs, a huge score against any side. Surely an ICC associate member like Ireland, a complete minnow in the world of cricket, couldn't chase that down? Enter Kevin O'Brien and a magnificent innings of 113 off 63 balls. The fastest World Cup century of all time. England brought their gun bowlers and on this perfect batting pitch, Ireland made them look like village pie-chuckers!

News surfaced late last week that the state of New Jersey wish to sell off Monmouth Park thoroughbred track and Meadowlands harness track to help fix the state's ailing finances. One of the names mentioned as a potential bidder has been Betfair. Betfair interested in purchasing Monmouth Park Betfair, a popular exchange wagering company in England who also owns Television Games Network, is reportedly interested in purchasing Monmouth Park. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said three weeks ago that state officials would request proposals for the sale of Monmouth, along with rights to operating off-track betting. It's an interesting scenario. New Jersey is one of the two (along with California) states that have passed legislation to allow exchange betting in the near future, but there are still numerous battles to fight before that goes ahead - namely the legitimacy/morality of laying and the return to the horsemen's groups (i.e. prizemoney)... and that's before th

Hardly a surprise in this news , they were never going to be a serious bookmaker without advertising outside their own network. The French market, where the government forces them to bet to joke percentages making winning long-term inconceivable, was always going to suit them better. Mature markets don't fall for marketing glitz and poor odds when you're well back in the queue for brand awareness.