Sport is made for betting

Shares in the two firms jumped at least 20% yesterday with the long-awaited announcement of the merger. Party Gaming, bwin Plan Gambling Merger PartyGaming PLC plans to merge with Austrian sports-book operator Bwin Interactive Entertainment AG, creating the world's largest listed online-gambling business. The new company will be owned 48.36% and 51.64% by PartyGaming and Bwin shareholders respectively and will be listed on the London Stock Exchange. It would have a combined net gambling revenue of €682 million ($885.6 million) and combined earnings before interest, taxes and amortization of €196 million, PartyGaming said. Shares in PartyGaming jumped 20% Thursday, valuing the company at £1.26 billion ($1.96 billion), while Bwin shares soared 25% on the Vienna Stock Exchange, valuing the company at €1.58 billion. Jim Ryan, Chief Executive of PartyGaming, and Norbert Teufelberger, co-CEO of Bwin, will run the merged group as co-chief executives. Mr. Teufelberger said his co-...

Front page of today's Racing Post - "Chandler ups ante with levy pledge related to exchanges". The British betting industry's no.1 tax and levy dodger, Victor Chandler, who led the move to Gibraltar over a decade ago, has pledged to start paying levy on his offshore business if Betfair gets taxed/levied as he believes is right! What right does he have to declare himself holier than thou? He currently pays levy on his ONE shop in London and his on-course racing business, which would hold a pittance in turnover compared to his Gibraltar business. "The whole centre of the problem with the levy lies with betting exchanges," he says. This is the bloke who did a runner to Gibraltar in 1999 to avoid paying tax and levy in the first place. How can the system be screwed because of exchanges when tax-dodgers like him started the avoidance of levy before Betfair was even founded? "I will make a promise today that if the BHA and the British government make th...

The whole premise of French protectionism over gambling was to protect the PMU, the local racing tote which funds the local racing industry. The French government have shown their distaste for Betfair and exchange betting from day one, and fixed-odds betting on horse racing for any other operator has not been approved either. So in that case, why would they licence two competing pari-mutuel operators to bet on French horse racing? They won't be allowed shops which will mean pool liquidity can only struggle. Geny Infos (genbet.fr) was last night granted a licence for pari-mutuel betting on horse racing, as was ZeTurf France (zeturf.fr), a company which have 'illegally' tried to compete with the PMU for many years. So they licence a firm which has consistently broken the rules in the past, and yet not Betfair who had made no attempt to target France until the last 18 months or so, before ceasing all activity there to conform with the new law. Perhaps it's the governm...

You can read my betting preview for today's race at Hockenheim on PuntingAce . Season results so far can be found here . Here's hoping for a bit of rain to spice up today's race!

I was getting bored with the old layout, about time I had something fresh. Now if I could just find the right racing image to use as the background...

While this article specifically refers to racing in the UK, there aren't many racing jurisdictions in the world that these issues don't apply to. From Global Betting and Gaming Consultants... UK Horseracing Must Face Commercial Reality Selected quotes As we have said before the horse racing industry has wasted money, not allocated resource where it will deliver the best return and has not committed funds to reserves. Now we have the recession. This one is called the Great Recession and it is causing business to really think about the way it operates and is creating efficiencies previously not considered. A recession exposes faulty business models and those who have not been prudent during the boom are being tested. We are now in a period where the niceties of life have to be placed on one side. We are beyond politics now; it is the time when all sides have to be unfailingly realistic. . . The problem is that racing many years ago started to believe its own PR that the product w...

And Don King wasn't even involved. Australian boxer Danny Green sought an easy retention of his IBO cruiserweight title, lining up against four-years retired 'boxer' Paul Briggs. Briggs was allegedly paid $200k for the fight, yet went down to a punch most three-year olds would be embarrassed by, just 29 seconds into the first round. And everyone seemed to know about it too - some Australian bookmakers reported the price of R1 KO being smashed from 10.0 to 1.55! Briggs' 29-second fiasco has bookies fearing a fix BETTING agencies will today demand that the International Boxing Organisation launch an investigation into the farcical result of Danny Green's title defence in Perth last night against Paul Briggs, fearing a fix. Green's angry reaction to Briggs's capitulation within 30 seconds rivalled that of the stunned audience's. Briggs went down to a glancing jab that appeared to hit his glove, not his head, and he stayed down for the full count. The fight ...

Under the EU guidelines/legislation/regulations, EU member states are expected to allow gambling services from other EU members states unless they can prove the reason behind blocking them is social policy - namely protection of locals from the 'evils' of gambling. In countries like the Netherlands, this leads inevitably ends up being protect the local monopoly but ban all others - hardly social policy at all, just the protection of high margins which go directly into the state coffers. Norway, and much of Scandinavia, attempts the same social policy - outlawing all competition in favour of the local high margin, state-owned operator Norsk Tipping. Studies around the world, in Norway and Australia in particular, have shown that problem gambling is most likely to originate from betting machines - called slots, pokies or fruit machines depending on where you live. In fact, just a few years ago, because 80% of problem gambling cases were coming from these machines, Norsk Tipping u...

I'm glad this happened because if the wowsers got this one kicked off TV, then humour would never be allowed in advertising ever again. ASA dismisses Paddy Power ad complaints The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has cleared a TV advertisement for Irish bookmaker Paddy Power that showed a game of football being played between two teams of blind men which ended with a cat being kicked into a tree, despite more than 1,000 complaints from viewers - one of the highest ever recorded by the ASA. The TV ad showed a game of football being played by two teams of blindfolded men, using a ball which had a bell inside it. One player kicked the ball off the pitch and a cat, wearing a bell on its collar, ran on to the pitch. The referee was about to blow his whistle, when one of the men was shown taking a kick and a thud and a loud cat's meow was then heard - although no contact between the player and the cat was shown on screen (and the cat was shown to be fine afterwards, albeit hi...