Sport is made for betting

And they're off at Roland Garros. Here are my previews from PuntingAce Scott Ferguson's French Open Previews Good luck!

And you thought your politicians/courts were hopeless! (Applies to just about every nation in the world) 'Rights Recognition' Lands Unibet €1.2m French Fine Unibet has become the first victim of the highly controversial ‘sports betting right’ which is yet to be formally adopted in France, but which has been retroactively applied to the online gaming and betting operator by a Paris court this week. As a result, Unibet must now pay €300,000 to the Roland Garros tennis tournament in recognition of the ownership right, in addition to a further €900,000 in penalties. So a law which hasn't been introduced yet and will never receive EU approval now says Unibet has to hand over 1.2m euro for something which happened in the past. Funnily enough, Unibet will be challenging the decision.

Belgian court tells French Tennis Federation to move into the 21st century and accept the fact that 99.9% of gambling is perfectly legitimate. In what has to go down as one of the most ridiculous court cases in modern times, a Belgian court has thrown out the FTF's claims that betting was bringing down the reputation of tennis, and in particular, the French Open. The FTF had sought to ban Betfair, Bwin and Ladbrokes from betting on this year's tournament. Shame the FTF couldn't work out that having players such as Sesil Karatantcheva and Mariano Puerta fail dope tests, and having the ignorant local crowd jeer most players who aren't French does a lot more damage to the tournament's reputation that a recreational pastime that makes claycourt tennis a lot more exciting for a very significant portion of the viewing audience. Read the Guardian article here .