Sport is made for betting

A big day for Social Media Racing and more specifically, the Twitterati, as this syndicate is known. The world's first racehorse ownership syndicate put together on Twitter makes his debut tonight at Beth in the 5.05. Trending is his name, I'm one of the 60 part-owners involved and will be hoping for a promising start to his career. Unfortunately it's a chaotic time at work at the moment (hence lack of posting lately) so being on course to be part of the action will have to wait until one of his later starts. Jeremy Gask landed a winner last night at Ffos Las, let's hope the form continues....

We've heard about poker sites being targetted by the US Dept of Justice - sportsbooks are fearing the same attention. One of the biggest, The Greek (formerly called Olympic), has decided to stop taking bets from US residents effective immediately. They avoided the attention when Pinnacle stopped taking US bets several years ago, now they feel time is right to distance themselves from the US totally. US players are being transferred over to Heritage Sports. Another book under the same ownership, BetJamaica, has closed its door entirely. All accounts transferred to The Greek, with the US accts then transferred to Heritage. See this thread on Covers.com for details. They won't be the last sportsbook to make/be forced into this decision.

Australian football has become the benchmark for sporting bodies policing betting by players. Integrity agreements with betting firms allow them to monitor betting activity, particularly when it comes to names on their special list. Of course, it is never going to stop it completely if the players have half a brain (read further to see how clueless some of them are), but it gives the league great power to detect and investigate suspicious betting activity. Heath Shaw suspended for eight weeks for betting on Collingwood game SHAMED Collingwood premiership stars Heath Shaw and Nick Maxwell have expressed regret over a betting scandal that has rocked the AFL ladder leader. The pair copped heavy punishments for breaking the AFL's strict anti-gambling rules after an investigation found they shared inside information with friends and family. .. .. The betting scam involved the information that Maxwell was to play in the forward line against Adelaide and not in his usual backli...

London papers regularly run stories of many crimes in the city being simply ignored because they are committed by foreign diplomats, often far more serious than shoplifting or a traffic infringement. So I'm surprised there hasn't been an attempt to wipe this gambling debt under similar outdated protocol... Sheikh loses Bahraini palace to bookmaker Spreadex after racking up gambling debts Bookmaker Spreadex is in line to receive a share in a Bahraini palace part-owned by royal family member Sheikh Hamad Al Khalifa after he racked up a quarter of a million pounds in gambling debts. And I thought the Arabs weren't allowed to gamble...

... and bring in a lie detector. Well, it's a start at least, but the problem goes much deeper than that. If players are disenchanted with their clubs or the wrong type of people are involved with the club, then their heads can easily be turned. The new rules need to encourage whistle-blowers, to keep the wrong people out of the locker rooms, provide players with a long-term future in the sport rather than making them survive on a low base wage and to see the K-League share information with the betting firms. Simply removing the option to bet locally, only makes it easier for match-fixers. Every bet then goes via illegal channels, mostly outside South Korea, and without any chance of tracing it. Regulation and establishing an audit trail is the best way forward..... K-League ups base salary after match-fixing stain The top local professional football league said Monday it will improve the welfare of its players and hand out severe punishments for corruption in response to a ...

This is utterly ridiculous. In a land where opponents of the self-appointed President simply disappear off the streets, and the police regularly get a slice off proceedings from armed robberies, the head muppet of FIFA has joined with Robert Mugabe in declaring match-fixing to be evil and that all people found to be involved in football corruption will be banned for life. FIFA Join Hands With Interpol On Match Fixing Investigations: Blatter Harare, July 05, 2011 - FIFA president, Sepp Blatter has hinted on a possible life ban on all those implicated in match-fixing scandals in Zimbabwe if found guilty. “We will ban all those involved in shady deals in this country if they are found guilty. This is a country that has talent which no administrator would want to see going to waste. You have work to develop that talent and not to kill it through things such as match-fixing,” Blatter told administrators during a press conference organized for him by Zifa. The press conference was ...

You would be wrong. There are all sorts of reasons why players would agree to throw a match, or part of a match. If you go back to the famous 1919 Chicago Blacksox baseball scandal , the players involved agreed to throw the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds because they felt they were grossly underpaid by the team owner. The opportunity was there, and in came the underworld connection who liked a bet. The name Wilson Raj Perumal is infamous in match-fixing circles and if you google search him, you'll find people blaming his ego for getting caught. He borrowed money from people to start fixing matches, didn't pay them all back despite having a lavish lifestyle and posting photos on Facebook of him travelling the world... people he owed money to naturally started getting a bit pissed off. In this article , you'll read a story of how one low-level cup match in Malaysia was thrown for as little as RM200 (£42) each to six players, from an accomplice of Raj Perumal. Th...

UEFA's anti-corruption team has been busy, handing over vast amounts of evidence to the Greek and Turkish prosecutors over local match-fixing. Police announce arrests in Greek match-fixing probe Turkish football in crisis after match-fixing investigation Until big names and big clubs are brought down in these cases, it will continue on. Perhaps that won't even stop it - it hasn't stopped dodgy late-season results in Italy, but the Juventus scandal wasn't over betting, just presidential egos and putting pressure on referees... And there's plenty more on the story from Declan Hill 70,000 Copies of the ‘The Fix’ and the Prosecutor Who is Cleaning the Stables