Skip to main content

industry update

Ok, plenty been happening lately, here's some of the news in brief.


Betfair - have announced the new CEO, Breon Corcoran from Paddy Power, will take over in August 2012 after a lengthy stint of enforced gardening. The company still need to find a new Chairman with Ed Wray intending to stand down. Last week, Chief Commercial Officer Niall Wass announced he was leaving the firm after missing out on the CEO job. He's off to an even bigger money-grubber firm in the short-term loaners Wonga. No great loss there, he has been high up the company through a lot of their woes. It is expected that Corcoran will bring in several people to take key posts. Andrew Black sold off around £1.5m of shares, apparently for a new tech firm investment he's involved with. It's not as if he's cashing out just out yet, his stake in Betfair is still valued at around £75m.

Denmark and Spain are ready to open up for licensing, with several international firms lining up to apply. Meanwhile in Greece, why would you bother when the economy is such a basket case? In France, the government have achieved their objective of expanding the business of the local former monopolies at the same time as pissing off all the foreign firms who are rightfully pissed off at the ridiculous taxation regime in place. Similarly, other firms who haven't restricted French customers and aren't blocked are enjoying additional business as the French punters who get wise about the ridiculous margins forced upon locally-licensed operators force them to be uncompetitive. Unibet will be handing in their French licence and cashing in on the marketing expenditure of EurosportBet whose owners they have just purchased. Why waste money on advertising heavily, when you can get someone else to do it for you, then only pay €5m for the firm? Sounds like smart business to me....

In Australia, the hopes of anyone getting any money back from SportsAlive are very slim. The appeal decision in the race fields legislation case between Racing NSW and Sportsbet & Betfair is getting closer, and the national racing industry might finally be able to set a consistent policy nationwide in relation to betting operators. Sportingbet management have taken over at Centrebet with mass redundancies being made.

And in the States, they're still bumbling around trying to get sports betting legalised. I reckon I'll have grandkids first....


Sorry about the quiet period folks, have been off on paternity leave :)

Comments

  1. The Market Examiner22 November 2011 at 23:26

    Thanks for the updates Scott, and congratulations on your new arrival!

    Hope all going well.
    Sam

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks for your comments, but if you're a spammer, you've just wasted your time - it won't get posted.

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,
Post a Comment
Read more

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
14 comments
Read more

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...
33 comments
Read more