02May

Sportradar, the ‘Nice Mafia’ Problem, & Another Dark Secret at the Heart of the Gambling Industry

Sportradar is facing massive pushback after two controversial reports on their business practices It’s big. It’s huge. If the short sellers’ reports by Muddywaters and Callisto are true, this is the end of Sportradar. There is no possible way for the company to survive. Note, please, the - if these reports are true - part. However, the vultures are circling. America being America, class action lawyers have set up shop trawling for customers. Three different sets of government regulators are - purportedly -...

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24Apr

The Dark Secret at the Heart of the Sportradar Controversy and Indian Organized Crime

Sportradar, the darling of the sports integrity industry, has been been hit hard by two investigation reports on their alleged links to criminal bookmakers and a superb documentary on organized crime in international cricket. What a day this has been! The journalistic equivalent of you-wait-for-hours and then-5 buses-all-come-along-at-once. There are at least five major stories that have broken today. For now, here are some points on two of those stories - more later on the other scandals. The Dark Secret at...

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14May

The Pearl Harbor of U.S. Sports Gambling: 7 points on the Supreme Court Decision

There are certain days and events in history where everything changes. One day is ‘before’ - then the event happens and everything is changed ‘after’ that moment.  You can choose your personal moment in history: September 11th, the Fall of the Berlin Wall, Pearl Harbor, Black Tuesday and the Great Depression, the Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, etc, etc… Today, in sports, was one of those events. The American Supreme Court struck down a decades-old law prohibiting sports gambling in the United...

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10Feb

The Greatest Case of Commercial Blindness in the History of Sports Integrity

There are all kinds of examples of inappropriate blindness. There was Captain Smith of the SS Titanic not seeing the iceberg. There was Admiral Nelson putting the telescope to his eye patch not to see the signal to retreat. There was Johnny Papalia the mafia thug who beat up the head of Toronto’s illegal gambling racket in front of two-hundred people in a crowded restaurant and when the police arrived none of the patrons said they saw anything. Then there is...

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13Dec

Canada’s Shame

The success of Toronto FC aside, Canadian soccer remains an abject embarrassment — not because of quality of play, but because European police and sports officials say a lower-level Canadian league remains a hot spot of corruption and match-fixing. “You are supposed to be honest people,” Kee, a Chinese-Malaysian bookie who runs an illegal gambling site in Kuala Lumpur, said last year. “How can you be honest when so many fixed soccer games are going on in your country?” These accusations...

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