Aussie punters are set to lose about $200 million to foreign bookies this year thanks to a growing addiction to sports betting. That’s nearly $10 each for every man, woman and child. Experts warn we are breeding the next generation of problem gamblers: young men with a smartphone and a reckless urge to win. Aggressive television advertising and high profile sponsorship deals with sporting codes have turned sports gambling into the fastest growing type of gambling in Australia. Aussies punted $160 billion on gambling in 2009-10 – more than we spent on food. Of this, we lost $18.5 billion –…

Rant Sports – In 1954, the Baltimore Colts began a trend that was initially viewed as a novelty act but would go on to forever change the landscape of the NFL. This change to football had nothing to do with the on-field product, though, it was the invention of cheerleading teams in the league. Since the Colts decided to form their own cheerleading team there has been a boon of teams who have picked up the trend of having their own cheer squad, but no team has had a bigger impact on the status of cheerleaders in the NFL than…

Sky Bet, the sports betting division of TV conglomerate Sky, has posted a 20% year-on-year rise in gaming revenue to £32 million (€37.9 million/$51.9 million) for the three months until the end of September 2013. In an interim financial report for the first quarter of the new financial year, Sky Bet said that the figures had been achieved despite unfavorable results at the start of the 2013-14 football season. “Net revenue growth was 20% as the sports results weren’t favorable,” Sky Bet managing director Richard Flint told the Yorkshire Post newspaper. “We grew our user numbers by more than 20…

iGaming Business – Chinese sports lottery software and systems developer AGTech Holdings’ Beijing subsidiary AGTech GOT Technology has won a tender to supply the Guangdong Sports Lottery Administration Centre with football single match betting (SMB) computerised sports lottery terminals. AGTech, which is supplying SMB terminals for the first time in China, said that its GOT terminals are compatible with all computerised sports products in the country. Guangdong currently ranks as China’s third largest province in terms of sports lottery sales during the last few years, while SMB is proving to be one of the country’s fastest growing products. “By entering…

Regulating sports betting in India is not the question. The question, as articulated by Justice Mukul Mudgal, former Chief Justice, Punjab and Haryana High Court and Chairman, SC-Probe Panel, IPL 2013 Betting and Spot Fixing Scandal is, why regulation is slow to come by. Speaking at the FICCI Conference on Regulating Sports Betting and Sports Law here on Saturday, Justice Mudgal gave several reasons for regulating sports betting with a sense of urgency. He said that the Government can earn substantial amount of revenue from taxing these activities; it is taking place in an unauthorized manner in the country which…

WWNO – Complain all you want about how sports in the U.S. are run, but the playing fields aren’t always greener on the other side. In Europe, FIFA, the soccer federation, is dealing with problems associated with the 2022 World Cup’s timing and venue. For one, after awarding the World Cup to Qatar, those running FIFA wonder now if it’d be better to play the games in winter when it will be cooler — only that’s when all the European leagues are operating. Also, in doing its due diligence, FIFA failed to appreciate that Qatar planned to build its World…