Sport is made for betting

Item in today's RP suggests FIFA are considering banning in-play betting on football over corruption fears. 'What a great idea' will say the do-gooders and Daily Mail readers who don't have a clue about the outside world. Any knowledge of betting in football will let you swiftly decide this is the stupidest idea since awarding the World Cup to a country which bans alcohol and homosexuality, doesn't even have to hotel capacity to cater for one full stadium of visitors and will be 45-50C during July. Mark Davies has written an excellent post on it here - UEFA and FIFA: focus, please! If bookmakers offer 'micro-betting', markets on tiny events during the match such as next free kick or next throw-in, who is taking the risk? The bookie. What is a bookie's job to do? Manage risk. What happens when people fall out of trees to back one option in a multi-selection, reasonably random market? They shut it off and investigate, maybe even alerting sporting autho...

As the world moves forward with global trading, technology which can put you in touch with people on the other side of the world in real time and open borders across Europe, Poland wants to step back into the dark ages and prosecute online gamblers for betting offshore. Not even America tries that ridiculous tactic.... Poland threatens to prosecute online gamblers An act passed in October 2009 banned online gambling and related advertising, but the ban has clearly not been effective. In early 2010 the government even proposed an internet filter system to take control of internet gambling by blocking foreign-hosted gambling sites, but after petitions were sent to President Lech Kaczyński criticizing the plan, the idea was eventually abandoned. .... The new laws, according to the Warsaw Business Journal, would allow individual gamblers to be prosecuted for using foreign-hosted gambling sites. It would also severely restrict the rules surrounding advertising, bringing foreign gamb...

News breaking tonight of another betting scandal involving the Pakistan cricket team and the News of the World, an English tabloid newspaper. A middle-man is alleged to have arranged no-balls at specific times in the England first innings in the current Test match at Lord's, in return for substantial amounts of money. The no-balls in question bowled by Mohammed Amir were not even close, at least a foot over, which is curious, the one for Mohammed Asif wasn't so blatant. But is it as clear-cut as it seems? For me, it sounds too perfect. Pakistan are easy targets - they don't have a great reputation for integrity, and linking it to illegal bookmakers on the sub-continent is the perfect modus operandi as they have no licence or audit trail. People say that millions get bet on this stuff, despite all sorts of previous allegations about these markets, but there's nowhere to prove it is true or not. Was the evidence shown to anyone before the event, or did it only emerge co...

Considering how huge sports betting is in Asia, this is hardly a surprise, but Malaysia is a predominantly Muslim country, a religion which is vehemently anti-gambling. Underground betting in Malaysia is huge, I got to experience it a decade ago when I lived there briefly. Malaysian soccer legends support legalised betting Legends bet on legalised gambling ahead of World Cup Kuala Lumpur. Four Malaysian football legends on Wednesday threw their support behind a proposal to legalize sports betting ahead of this year’s World Cup finals in South Africa. The former players said legalizing sports wagers would reduce rampant illegal betting and match-fixing, but some also warned it could encourage people to go into debt. Last month the New Straits Times newspaper said sports betting might be legalized in time for the World Cup, which will be held from June 11-July 11. It said the Berjaya Group, a major Malaysian conglomerate with holdings ranging from lottery to casino operations, was seekin...