Rumours have been rife in recent months and this article confirms it, IASBet, the Australian corporate bookmaking operation headed by Mark Read, is up for sale. Read must be about 60 now and probably feels the time is right to sit back and enjoy his money rather than stressing about the demands of shareholders. Ever since floating back in 1999 at $2, it's been a pretty lame stock, most recently trading around the 30c mark. He hopes to sell for $1 a share which is pretty ambitious in the current climate. I started my career in the betting industry and still own a small lump of shares. I'd be happy to get any more than the two cases of beer it has been worth for the past five years!
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, ...
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