Centrebet (ASX: CIL) is an Australian bookmaker licensed in the Northern Territory.

Centrebet originated from Alice Springs, Northern Territory and was the first bookmaker to be licensed in Australia in 1993 and the first bookmaker to go online in the Southern Hemisphere. Centrebet was acquired by its biggest domestic rival, the SportOdds Group in 2003 for the sum of AUD$46.55 million. In 2005, SportOdds merged its Centrebet, SportOdds.com and SuperOdds.co.uk businesses into one entity, known as Centrebet.

Michael McRitchie is the CEO of the company while Peter Foot acts as chief bookmaker.

Centrebet is the second largest private bookmaking company in Australia and one of the biggest bookmakers in the world, with betting across all sports (both within and outside of Australia), horse racing and other events, including Australian elections and television shows. The Centrebet Group offers over 4000 individual betting options every week.

The Centrebet Group has recently commenced expansion of its core operations to include online gaming, including poker and casino. However, due to Australia's Interactive Gambling Act, the Group are not permitted to offer gaming products to Australians. In 2006, the company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange.

In January 2011 Centrebet acquired the naming rights to Penrith Stadium; under sponsorship rights it will be known as Centrebet Stadium Penrith for the next five years. In February 2011 a three year deal as a major sponsor of the St Kilda Football Club was also announced.

Links

• Official site

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Type Private
Industry Online gambling
Founder(s) Peter Coates & Denise Coates
Headquarters Stoke-on-Trent, England
Area served United Kingdom
Services Online betting & gaming
Owner(s) Peter Coates
Employees 1000+
Website www.bet365.com

bet365 Group Limited, is a United Kingdom based gambling company. bet365 is one of the world’s leading online gambling groups with over 4 million customers in 200 different countries. The Group employs over 1,000 people.

Overview

bet365 is an online gambling company offering sports betting, poker, casino games, and bingo, as well as video streams on sporting events. bet365 also offers an on-course bookmaking service.

For sports betting, bet365 are licensed and regulated by the UK Gambling Commission. bet365's casino, games and poker operations are licensed and regulated by the government of Gibraltar.

bet365's site is available in 17 different languages and supports a wide variety of payment solutions including credit/debit cards and Neovia.

Ownership

The company, based in Stoke-on-Trent, is owned by Peter Coates, chairman of Stoke City F.C. and the 19th richest person in British football.^[1]

Controversial donations

Peter Coates, director of Bet365, is a lifelong supporter of the British Labour party who has donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to the party. One particularly large donation coincided with the relaxation of gambling legislation and the lifting of a ban on television advertising by the Labour government.^[2]

bet365 Affiliates

bet365 offers an online Affiliate Program where webmasters and marketing persons have the ability to earn commissions on the players they refer to bet365. The online affiliate program allows affiliates to earn commissions as a set percent which is inline with other affiliate programs on online bingo, sports betting, online poker and online casinos.^[3]

Awards

At the eGaming Review Operator Awards 2010 organized by eGaming Review magazine, bet365 won the "Operator of the Year" award.^[4]

References

1. ^ "This is Staffordshire - COATES TAKES HIS PLACE AMONG THE BIG PLAYERS".
2. ^ "Questions over betting boss's cash donation for Labour".
3. ^ "bet365 Affiliate Program".
4. ^ "Bet365 wins EGR Operator of the Year award".

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Type Private Limited
Founded 2006
Headquarters Douglas, Isle of Man
Area served International
Key people Andy Scott (CEO)
Industry Gaming
Products Bookmaking , Online Casino , Live Casino , Financial Bet
Employees 500+
Parent Cube Limited
Slogan The In-Play Specialist
Website www.188bet.com
Type of site online gambling
Available in Multilingual

188BET is an online sportsbook provider. 188BET is owned by Cube Limited, which is licensed and regulated by the Isle of Man.^[1]

Sponsorship

188BET are the principle sponsor of Bolton Wanderers and Wigan Athletic in the Barclays Premier League for the 2009/2010 and 2010/2011 seasons, replacing previous sponsors Reebok and JJB Sports.

They were reported as being the first company to sponsor two football clubs in the Barclays Premier League for the same season.^[2][3] However, from 2000 to 2002, Newcastle United and Aston Villa were both sponsored by NTL, the first actual occurrence of two Premier League clubs having the same shirt sponsor.^[4][5] The third such occurrence will take place in the 2010/11 season when FxPro will be the principle shirt sponsor for Aston Villa and Fulham.^[6][7]

Wigan Athletic chairman Dave Whelan had turned down offers to replace previous sponsor JJB and was going to put his own DW Fitness and Sports name on the Wigan shirt but opted to take a 'very lucrative' package from 188BET instead.^[8]

188BET also partner other Premier League teams Aston Villa, Chelsea, Liverpool and Everton.^[9][10][11]

Controversy

In October 2009, representatives of the Premier League criticised 188BET and SBOBET for offering live betting on academy football games, maintaining that children and youth activities should not be exposed by international gambling organisations.^[12] Both bookmakers subsequently suspended betting on academy games and expressed their intention to seek clarification from the Premier League and the Professional Footballers' Association about which football markets they should be allowed to offer.^[13]

Notes

1. ^ Licensees on the Isle of Man
2. ^ "188BET agrees football shirt deal first". uk.reuters.com. 2009-05-12
3. ^ Gibson, Owen (2009-05-12). "Wigan Athletic and Bolton Wanderers agree shirt sponsorship deals with same online betting company". London: www.guardian.co.uk.
4. ^ Newcastle kit history
5. ^ Villa kit history
6. ^ Fulham signs new shirt sponsor
7. ^ FxPro Announces Aston Villa Football Club Shirt Sponsorship
8. ^ "Wigan chairman Whelan secures lucrative sponsorship deal". www.tribalfootbal.com. Archived from the original on 2009-05-27.
9. ^ http://www.188premiership.com/en/?page_id=248 188BET completes summer signings by securing Chelsea FC deal. Accessed 2009-08-15. Archived 2009-08-21.
10. ^ Clegg, Jonathan (2009-11-03). "Liverpool Signs Sponsorship Deal With 188BET". blogs.wsj.com.
11. ^ [http://www.asiaplate.com/blog.php?blog_id=427 Everton sign deal with 188bet
12. ^ White, Duncan (2009-10-17). "Premier League fears corruption after 188bet and SBObet offers betting on teenagers". London: telegraph.co.uk.
13. ^ White, Duncan (2009-10-24). "Premier League and PFA pressure forces bookmakers to end betting on youth football". London: telegraph.co.uk.

Links

• 188BET Official site

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

With the arrival of the World Wide Web, many bookmakers have an online brand, although independently owned bookmakers often still maintain a "bricks and mortar" only operation and others operate a "skin" or "white label" operation which they purchase from one of the large firms as is the case with BetDirect and Betterbet . The main websites only accept bets from countries where internet gambling is not prohibited, and from people over 18 years old. Often these websites are linked to online casinos. Controversially, the explosion in Internet gambling is being linked to an increase in gambling addiction, according to the UK's help and advice organizations for addicts, GamCare and Gamblers Anonymous.

Increasingly, online bettors are turning to the use of betting exchanges such as Betfair and BETDAQ, which automatically match Back and Lay bets between different bettors, thus effectively cutting out the bookmaker's traditional profit margin also called an overround.

These online exchange markets operate a market index of prices near but usually not at 100% competitiveness as exchanges take commissions on winnings. True Wholesale odds are odds that operate at 100% of probabilistic outcomes.

Some bookmakers have even taken to using betting exchanges as a way of laying off unfavorable bets and thus reducing their overall exposure. This has led insecurity from the TAB in Australia, a government-run betting agency which attempted to deny Betfair an Australian license by running unfavorable ads in the media regarding the company. When Tasmania granted Betfair a license despite these efforts the Western Australian state legislature passed a law that specifically criminalised using betting exchanges from within the state, however that law was later ruled to be unconstitutional.

Betting exchanges are universally disliked by the traditional bookmaker. Not only are they generally able to offer punters better odds due to their much lower overheads, but also in giving opportunities for arbitrage: the practice of taking advantage of a price differential between two or more markets, although traditionally arbitrage has always been possible by backing all outcomes with bookmakers (dutching) as opposed to laying an outcome on an exchange. Exchanges do, however, allow bookmakers to see the state of the market and can set their odds accordingly.

Bets are also taken via phones, using SMS text messages, though poker and other sports are more suited to other mediums. As technology moves on, the gambling world ensures it is a major player in new technology operations.

Most televised sports in the United Kingdom and Europe are now sponsored wholly or partly by Internet and high street bookmakers, with sometimes several bookmakers and online casinos being displayed on players' shirts, advertising hoardings, stadium signs and competition event titles, although Werder Bremen are currently fighting the German courts for the freedom to continue featuring bookmaker Bwin on their shirts, as Germany and France take action against online gamers.

With the recent banning of tobacco sponsorship, and the significant commercial budgets available to the gaming industry, sponsorship by car manufacturers, alcoholic drinks, soft drinks and fast food marketers is being rapidly replaced by sponsorship by gaming companies in the Far East and Europe.

The United Kingdom Gambling Act 2005 introduces a new regulatory system for governing gambling in Great Britain. This system includes new provisions for regulating the advertising of gambling products. These provisions of the Act came into effect in September 2007. It is an offence to advertise in the UK, gambling which physically takes place in a non-European Economic Area (EEA), or in the case of gambling by remote means, gambling which is not regulated by the gambling laws of an EEA state.^[1]

The situation is more confused in the United States, which has attempted to restrict operators of foreign gambling websites accessing their domestic market. This has resulted in a ruling against the US Government by the WTO.^[2]

References

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Traditionally, bookmakers have been located at the racecourse, but improved TV coverage and modernisation of the law have allowed betting in shops and casinos in most countries. In the UK, on-track bookies still mark up the odds on boards beside the race course and use tic-tac or mobile telephones to communicate the odds between their staff and to other bookies, but, with the modernisation of United Kingdom Bookmaking laws, online and high street gambling are at an all-time high, with a so-called Super Casino having been planned for construction in Manchester prior to the government announcing that this plan had been scrapped on 26 February 2008.

In 1961, Harold Macmillan's Conservative Government legalised betting shops and tough measures were enacted to ensure that bookmakers remained honest. A large and respectable industry has grown since. At one time there were over 15,000 betting shops in the UK. Now, through consolidation, they have been reduced to about 8,500. Currently there are four major "high street" bookmakers in the United Kingdom: William Hill, Ladbrokes, Coral, and state-owned ToteSport, with Sky Bet, Bet24, Betfred, Victor Chandler, Stan James, Sportingbet, Mansion and Bet365, rapidly emerging, in terms of turnover and event sponsorship.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Bookmaking may be legal or illegal, and may be regulated; in the United Kingdom it was at times both regulated and illegal, in that licences were required but no debts arising from gambling could be enforced through the courts. Now, since the inception of the National Lottery, not only is it completely legal in the UK, it is a small contributor to the British economy, with a recent explosion of interest with regard to the international gaming sector industry. However, gambling debts still remain unenforceable under English law.

Bookmaking is generally illegal in the United States, with Nevada being a notable exception.

In some countries, such as Singapore, Sweden, Canada and Hong Kong, the only legal bookmaker is state-owned and operated. In Canada, this is part of the lottery program and is known as Sport Select.

In the United Kingdom, trusted legal bookmakers are members of IBAS, which is an industry standard organization which resolves to settle

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

By adjusting the odds in his favor or by having a point spread, the bookmaker will aim to guarantee a profit by achieving a 'balanced book', either by getting an equal number of bets for each outcome, or (when he is offering odds) by getting the amounts wagered on each outcome to reflect the odds. When a large bet comes in, a bookmaker can also try to lay off the risk by buying bets from other bookmakers. The bookmaker does not generally attempt to make money from the bets themselves, but rather profiting from the event regardless of the outcome. Their working methods are similar to that of an actuary, who does a similar balancing of financial outcomes of events for the assurance and insurance industries.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Bookmakers on a greyhound race course, Reading, UK

A bookmaker, or bookie, is an organization or a person that takes bets on sporting and other events at agreed upon odds.

Range of events

Most bookmakers in the United States bet merely on college and professional sports, though in the United Kingdom and Ireland they offer a wider range of bets, including each-way betting on golf, football and tennis, and especially horse racing and greyhound racing. They also specialize in novelty events such as betting that there will be a white Christmas, the outcome of political elections and reality television contests.

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