Skip to main content

sports betting market manipulation rears its ugly head

Hardly a surprise considering the size of the UK betting market...

Rafa and Ribery used in betting scam

How hard do you think it would be to set this up? Bookies and punters love jumping at shadows or following the money regardless. Sooner or later, it had to turn into a scam. This sort of thing is outlawed in the financial world but I reckon it would be nigh on impossible to ban in the sports betting world. These types of markets - Next Manager, Player Transfers - are completely fuelled by rumours. If bookies want to bet on them, then they're asking for trouble....

The 'high-rollers' involved in this must have been losing accounts the syndicate bought to maximise their return - have you ever tried getting a decent bet on these markets???

Comments

  1. Would be hard to tell who is laying legitimate money or who is trying to push the price.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think it's a matter of how legitimate the information source is. I recall 3 guys at work betting on Rafa to go and going on about how quickly the price has dropped. I thought to myself at the time shall I have a punt? In the end I left it as I realised the quality of information was basically poor. Glad I did and I probably won't bet on these markets again as they are proving very dodgy.

    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

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

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...