Skip to main content

News summary

Lots going on, but very short of time lately, here's a quick look at what has been going on...

Sportingbet are keen to be acquired by Ladbrokes, but the 'Magic Sign' are nervous about SB's activity in Turkey, one of the strongest regions of their business. If Sportingbet are serious about the sale going through, looks like they will have to sell that part of the company.

The Betfair share price keeps on tumbling, not even the internal buyback scheme can stop the price sliding, sliding away...

The Gold Coast Turf Club is targetting night racing as a way to move themselves up the ladder of Australian racing. Sounds like a positive move, the weather's great up there but when they run their feature Magic Millions Day in January when it is approaching 40C, that's ridiculous. The racecourse does need a serious upgrade to its facilities if they want to become a bigger club, getting into the Friday night rotation of meetings would probably serve them better than being the sixth-ranked meeting on a Saturday, ignored by the majority of punters.

Veteran American tennis player Robbie Kendrick has been banned for 12 months after traces of MHA were found in his system when tested at the French Open. Kendrick claims to have checked online about the ingredients of the tablets he was given by a friend, but didn't spot obvious errors on the company website, and wasn't able to provide the investigation panel with a list of websites he visited because 'he was in the habit of clearing his browser history regularly'. Hmm, a man travelling the world on his own, spending a lot of time in hotel rooms.... why would he need to do that? Lol. On the face of it, it's a fair penalty, but it is unjust when you compare it to confessed HGH trafficker Wayne Odesnik who only received an eight-month ban and is back playing in this week's Washington event.

Questions have to be raised about the value of gaming licences in certain jurisdictions with the Full Tilt Poker/Alderney scandal. How valuable is a licence in one of these territories when they have no local consumers to protect, and thus are more inclined to care about the tax money arriving instead...

Bet24 have informed their clients about a security breach. That's all very nice, you know it can happen, but I'm sure they're working hard to stop it ever happening again, we can forgive them for that. It's not until you dig closer that you learn these events happened between 2007 and 2009! So it wasn't until the story was in the public domain by going to court that customers learned of it. Disgraceful. No surprise that these clowns are licensed in Malta, a jurisdiction with an ever-withering quality of gaming licence.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Spot-fixing - you will never, ever be able to stop it

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, ...

lay the field - my favourite racing strategy

Dabbling with laying the field in-running at various prices today, not just one price, but several in the same race. Got several matched in the previous race at Brighton, then this race came along at Nottingham. Such a long straight at Nottingham makes punters often over-react and think the finish line is closer than it actually is. As you can see by the number of bets matched, there was plenty of volatility in this in-play market. It's rare you'll get a complete wipe-out with one horse getting matched at all levels, but it can happen, so don't give yourself too much risk...

It's all gone Pete Tong at Betfair!

The Christmas Hurdle from Leopardstown, a good Grade 2 race during the holiday period. But now it will go into history as the race which brought Betfair down. Over £21m at odds of 29 available on Voler La Vedette in-running - that's a potential liability of over £500m. You might think that's a bit suspicious, something's fishy, especially with the horse starting at a Betfair SP of 2.96. Well, this wasn't a horse being stopped by a jockey either - the bloody horse won! Look at what was matched at 29. Split that in half and multiply by 28 for the actual liability for the layer(s). (Matched amounts always shown as double the backers' stake, never counts the layers' risk). There's no way a Betfair client would have £600m+ in their account. Maybe £20 or even £50m from the massive syndicates who regard(ed) Betfair as safer than any bank, but not £600m. So the error has to be something technical. However, rumour has it, a helpdesk reply (not gospel, natur...