Sport is made for betting

The Daytona 500 was rained off on Sunday, and again Monday afternoon local time, so the race was run on Monday night, which meant it started after midnight UK time. And it has just finished at 6am UKT. So combine that with being shown on a premium channel, Premier Sports, and it made it a pretty poor trading race this year unfortunately. Overall matched volume on Betfair way lower than any previous year. Still got a green book, but nothing like in previous years and not worth the effort really. Thankfully I got a few hours sleep in the middle, just happened to have the baby wake me up near the end of the race... Matt Kenseth won the race, a crash with just a few laps to go usually sets up a great finish, but nobody was awake and Kenseth's teammate Greg Biffle (who was a much better result) was parked right behind him, protecting him from the chasing pack, hence no last-lap volatility and chaos. In previous years, it has been bloody marvellous - 2011 2010 and 2009 Ah well, c...

I told you this battle was going to be a lot harder than just convincing the legislators... Exchange wagering grilled at CHRB meeting Exchange wagering in California drew some strong opposition from The Stronach Group and several horsemen's organizations during its first California Horse Racing Board committee hearing Feb. 9 at Santa Anita. Commissioners David Israel and Richard Rosenberg heard testimony regarding implementation of exchange wagering in the state following passage of state legislation enabling it. At the end of the four-hour meeting, they took no action on a set of proposed rules developed by CHRB staff. “It seems to me this isn’t cooked yet,” Israel said at the conclusion. “There are too many objections by too many stakeholders. This has to be fully contemplated and the rules and regulations need to be tied down. We need to be realistic about how much time it’s going to take.” Read more at Bloodhorse Interesting that the Stronach Group are dead against it...

Some damning stats in this article from BBC Sport. This is a fight FIFA are no more likely to win than the Occupy groups are to takeover the world's financial districts or someone to achieve world peace.... Report shows match-fixing rife in Southern and Eastern Europe The true scale of match-fixing, racism and violence in European football has been revealed in new statistical research due to be released on Tuesday. FIFPro, the worldwide union for professional footballers, conducted a survey of thousands of players in Eastern and Southern Europe. Almost a quarter of players (23.6%) are aware of match-fixing in their league. The stats may cause particular concern for 2018 World Cup hosts Russia, where that figure is as high as 43.5%. The Black Book, a copy of which has been seen by the BBC, shows that 11.9% of footballers have been approached to consider fixing the result of a game, with that figure reaching 30.3% in Greece. The research found a clear link between non-payment...

A long-touted, but never developed until now, Bill to bring offshore betting from UK residents into line has been introduced in the Commons by @matthancockmp. The crux of the plan is to stop the big High St bookies skiving offshore and avoiding paying tax and levy on wagers which pass through their servers in havens like Gibraltar with a much kinder tax rate. Almost all the big betting firms now run their online and/or telephone betting operations outside of the UK, paying tax and levy only on their High St operations, although some volunteer to pay the horse racing Levy at least as if they were based here. Running offshore to minimise tax is not a new thing and it's certainly not confined to just the betting industry. But like all businesses who operate in the UK and then run their taxes through another country with no benefit other than profit maximisation, it costs jobs, tax revenue and the flow-on economic impact from those salaries not being paid in the UK. And then there...

If you're living in, or planning to visit, South Africa after next week, you'll have a problem trying to use Betfair. With sports betting licences now being granted to foreign companies (Ladbrokes and Sportingbet are two of the early licensees), the world's biggest betting exchange are in the process of applying for a traditional sportsbook licence. While that is in progress, they will be blocking access from within South Africa, in order to keep on the right side of local authorities. Betfair to pull out of SA UK-based betting community Betfair will no longer offer its services to South Africans from next Tuesday. The company says it will block access to its services from SA-based IP addresses, following the Supreme Court of Appeal ruling last September that declared online, or interactive, gambling illegal, says Betfair public affairs manager Tom Tuxworth. Betfair is applying for a traditional back-only sportsbook licence in the Western Cape under the existing framew...

Australian online bookmaker BetChoice has long been a potential acquisition target for European bookmakers wanting to step into the lucrative Australian market. Numerous firms are believed to have looked at them closely, but stepped back for a number of reasons including price tag and local bans on non-wagering products. BetChoice was the brainchild of Colin Tidy and Mark Morrissey, veterans of the Australian bookmaking fraternity, and like their counterparts Mark Read, Con Kafataris, Terry Lillis, Bryan Clark and others, the time was nigh for them to cash in on their years of labour while the going was good. Unibet signs agreement to acquire Betchoice and enter regulated Australian market Unibet Group plc today announces that it has signed an agreement to acquire 100 per cent of Betchoice Corporation Pty Ltd, one of Australia’s leading independent corporate bookmakers online. Betchoice operates a range of sports and racing betting products in the Australian market through ...

England Cricket is going full-throttle through the rollercoaster at the moment. After securing the no.1 Test ranking then not losing a Test during the summer, the England team were flying. A few months later, consider these contrasts in fortunes: 1. A huge new contract from Sky Sports to cover England home games until 2017, yet ECB Chairman makes himself sound a right tool by declaring 'pirate' websites live streaming games as the anti-Christ and the biggest problem the game has. GREED is the biggest problem cricket has. Remember when Australia had to name their first Ashes Test team 10 days before the match just for a stupid bloody marketing photo-shoot? It all went downhill from there. Greed is the problem from administrators selling their soul by taking televised cricket from the masses on terrestrial TV into the clutches of phone-hacking media supremo Rupert Murdoch, for every penny they can get. Grandma got pensioned off to the retirement home so the ECB could put a jac...