Bravo Sportingbet

Sportingbet have been announced as the naming rights sponsor of the Queen Mother Champion Chase during the Cheltenham Festival. They replace Seasons Holidays, who like most travel companies, will be feeling the pinch from the recession.

Why bravo? Unlike several other bookmakers sponsoring at the Festival - Stan James, William Hill and Ladbrokes - the Alderney-based firm pay the full amount of their UK horseracing levy voluntarily. The others pay very little on their online business. A bookmaker with a conscience rather than bloody-minded greed. Makes a pleasant change doesn't it with UK racing prizemoney levels ridiculously low?

Other major race sponsors at Cheltenham - Coral and the Tote are fully based in the UK and pay their respective taxes and levy.

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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

lay the field - my favourite racing strategy

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What shits me about match-fixing 'journalism'.

The anti-wagering media bandwagon has dozens of new members this week, all weighing in an industry they have absolutely no idea about. I'm all for getting the betting industry into the mainstream but it shits me no end when they roll out reports and celebrities who simply don't have a clue what they are talking about and don't bother to check basic facts which key arguments in their story. If this was the financial industry, making errors like this would have them in all sorts of trouble, but the same level of regulation doesn't apply because finance stock markets are supposedly all legitimate and serious, whereas sports betting is just a bit of fun for people who can never win in the long-term... according to the media. This week we have seen the sting by the Telegraph which, on the face of it, looks to be a tremendous piece of investigative work into fixing in English football. But the headlines around it are over-sensationalised yet again. Delroy Facey, a former pla

Sport is made for betting

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