Sport is made for betting

After the long-awaited confirmation of the Betfair float, an eastern European operator has decided to follow suit. Czech betting agency Fortuna has announced plans to list on the Prague and Warsaw stock exchanges. The company's main territories are the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland, with a heavy emphasis on retail. Czech Fortuna IPO planned by end-October Czech betting agency Fortuna plans to float shares on the Prague and Warsaw stock exchanges by the end of October, two sources with knowledge of the deal said on Friday. "The decision has been made this week. The firm's intention is to complete the listing by October," one of the sources said. The initial public offering (IPO) should be announced in the middle of next week, with a prospectus to follow in the coming weeks. . . Polish media reported in January that Fortuna, owned by Czech and Slovak financial group Penta Investments, planned to raise €100 million from an IPO. UniCredit a...

This is a great blog from a former Aussie colleague of mine who now makes a living punting professionally on Australian harness racing, particularly from his home state of Tasmania. UK punters won't have the slightest idea about that form of racing, but that's irrelevant, read his analysis of bet types and the logic behind how he trades.... Minimising losses and maximising returns Its easy to preach that punters should never bet more than they can afford to lose or that staking levels should remain consistent to balance out the peaks and troughs but that is easier said than done for a lot of people and I find the easiest way is to minimise losses and maximise returns. Its especially hard to get your head around mentally so I thought I might share a few strategies that assist me in doing this. Read the whole article, he knows his stuff as being able to make a living purely betting on totes (takeout at least 16%) is a very challenging task.

Sad news over the weekend with shamed British rugby league star Terry Newton taking his own life. Newton was serving a two-year ban for using human growth hormone, HGH. Only last month another high-profile athlete, American track star Antonio Pettigrew, took his own life after being exposed as having used HGH, despite it being back in his prime between 1997 and 2001. High-profile cyclist Marco Pantani took his own life in 2004 after years of allegations and suspensions over blood doping. Then there's the long list of professional athletes in a variety of sports, including wrestlers, cyclists and former Soviet bloc athletes who have been so screwed up by years of steroid abuse they've either taken their own lives or their hearts have seized. And of course, there's the famous case of Florence Griffith-Joyner who was never caught failing a dope test, but that was the era when USA Track and Field swept everything under the carpet, and Flo-Jo did wear ridiculous amounts of m...

The various appeals over the initial verdicts between Betfair and Racing NSW, and then Sportsbet and Racing NSW, over the racefields legislation fees will be heard this week. How long it will all take I'm not sure, but a piece of free advice for Peter V'Landys... start clearing out your desk!

Rival bookmaker Bodog don't mind a bit of innovative publicity, such as being first to price up who killed Archie Mitchell in EastEnders, which was then copied by several other firms. This time they have gone up with markets on the Betfair IPO valuation and the market moves are telling a story. Initially, under £1.4bn (remember, the figure quoted in most of the press was £1.5bn, which was their valuation in 2005 when Softbank purchased 23% of the company) was priced at 8/11 with over that figure available at evens. But money has come strongly for the under, forcing it down to 1/2, then 1/3. A Bodog spokesman said: “We have had 182 bets on the downside compared to just 22 on the upside. For a bet this niche this is quite a lot. Having a lot of experience in this industry I’m pretty certain these people will turn out to be right. “We even had people setting up multiple accounts so they could get three bets at the maximum of £500 a bet.” Sounds like a few ex-staff starting to ...

Have to give kudos to ATR presenter Sean Boyce for an excellent article picking holes in the petty arguments being put up by Betfair, bookmakers and the racing authorities at the moment over various issues all relating to funding. So much hot air and yet so many conveniently hidden facts are left out of each's argument. A petty fight with handbags and a lot of flimsy evidence. When Two Tribes Go To War . . Exchanges like to point to the price edge their customers enjoy but also insist that, despite the very different MO which makes that difference possible, they should be subject to tax and levy at the same rate as bookies. They also like to offer the more attractive products from the traditional bookies portfolio to their own customers using their own cash and operating as traditional bookies. Hence exchanges are happy to stand multiples to their customers in exactly the same way as bookies do – more about this later. Bookies in turn, hate comparisons with exchanges on the...

What a weekend for the bookies! Chelsea - LOST Arsenal - LOST Liverpool - Drew Man Utd - Drew Real Madrid - Drew Bayern Munich - LOST Racing bookmakers mightn't have been too happy with Frankie Dettori riding four winners in a row at Ascot, but their football profits, particularly from accumulators and coupons, would more than make up for that. It's always worth taking on the big names on the weekends before European action, there's regularly at least one big name which goes down, not so often a bonanza weekend like this one.

Saturday's AFL Grand Final was a marvellous conclusion to the 2010 season. Collingwood and St Kilda fought out a tremendous battle which went right down to the wire, so close in fact that it ended up in a draw, Collingwood 9.14 (68) to St Kilda 10.8 (68). Once a year followers probably expected the match to go into extra time to decide a result on the day, but they were wrong. Australia's native sport is unique in that a drawn Grand Final goes to a full replay the following week. The last time it happened was 1977, before most other sports found ways to break the deadlock. The FA Cup Final for example went to replays as recently as 1993, but the round-ball game is far more prone to stalemates. American sports always go to extra-time so there's no surprise there. The rugby codes now go to extra time, but not sure how long that has been the case. Only three times in 115 years has the AFL (or VFL) Grand Final ended in a draw and required a replay. Some have argued it's a...

Much has been made this week of the Californian government passing legislation to allow exchange wagering on horse racing in the state. With Betfair already having a presence in California as owners of broadcast network and pari-mutuel operator TVG, and sponsoring the bill, the easy conclusion is that Betfair will start up in the USA. But a lot of water still has to pass under the bridge before a Betfair-run exchange can be licensed. This bill also allowed pari-mutuel operators to raise takeout on Californian racing pools... so where is the logic in pushing rake up to over 20% on one hand, and bringing in a foreign company to run a business on 2-5% commission at the same time? Of course there's no guarantee Betfair would use (or be allowed to use) the same business model as they have in the UK, a market subject to far more competition. Politicians have a history of making half-baked decisions, particularly when they are desperate for cash (the state of California is as financia...