Sport is made for betting

Amid all the headlines for Greek and Turkish football, I hadn't seen this one before... Czech team Olomouc sanctioned for match-fixing The Czech football association said Thursday it had sanctioned Czech top-flight side Sigma Olomouc with a loss of nine points and a €164,000 for a 2009 match-fixing scandal. The association's disciplinary committee fined Olomouc for an attempt to bribe Bohemians Prague players with 300,000 koruna ahead of their league game in May 2009 to secure a place in the Europa League. Sigma's keeper Petr Drobisz, accused of having delivered the money, was handed an 18-month ban and a fine worth 200,000 koruna. Soft penalty in my opinion - where's the punishment for those in charge of the club who were behind it? Shooting the messenger (or courier in this case) is pathetic.

I haven't followed this whole story, but this really is bizarre. A proper lotteries company with a local monopoly should be a licence to print money.... Sazka board declares insolvency Prague, March 22 (CTK) - The board of Czech lottery operator Sazka said the company is in insolvency and asked its chairman Ales Husak to file an insolvency petition on the firm or join the previous one filed by deputy chairman Roman Jecminek, server iHNed.cz said yesterday. Surely there's more to this than meets the eye...

I have just returned from several days in Prague at the iGaming Super Show, an industry trade show where I helped out a couple of my clients. Competition for affiliates these days is intense, with all sorts of gimmicks going on. Cake Poker Network were giving away aprons and oven gloves, Jetbull had David Coulthard signing autographs as their 'brand ambassador' and one firm was giving away tiny bottles of vodka with the promise of a 350ml bottle of Jack Daniel's for every funded acct you sent them! And of course there were promo girls everywhere. Product-wise, one firm was touting MahJong as the next online phenomenon in a p2p format like poker, OddsMatrix were announcing some recent new customers for their automated sportsbook solution, Kyoogi were showing off a brilliant iPhone odds comparison application and there were rumours about which poker network Betfair would be joining soon.