"Its the biggest load of nonsense and its doing my head in" was one of Harry Redknapp's statements regarding his current legal situation. The "it" in question is the law and 'Arry evidently feels he exists above the confines of such restrictions.
And, its a family affair. In The Sun, ex-model son Mark squealed: "Someone is out to get dad". Meanwhile, Sky pundit Jamie and pop star wife Louise travelled to 'Arry's £10 million Poole house to be with mum Sandra while awaiting dad's release according to The Mirror.
Such heartwarming family background and mainstream media exposure for headlining defensive statements are not the norm in criminal investigations in this country. But, then again, 'Arry isn't yer average operator.
Brinkmanship is 'Arry's middle name. By constantly focusing on grey areas of dubious legality, he has built up a business empire way beyond that which ought to be the product of 25 years of salary as a football manager. Part of a property development company that, at the last count, possessed around 1000 houses (mainly in east and south-east London), 'Arry was also rumoured to be the manager that had placed £12 million of bets on Premiership games in one season with Gibraltar-based bookmaker Victor Chandler (that averages as over £30K on every single match in the season!). The whistleblower who made the allegation was immediately silenced by the High Court writ gained by Redknapp's protector, Max Clifford. Within the game, the media perception of 'Arry as a wheeler-dealer is one that is portrayed and spun as a lovable-rogue-who-knows-a-good-player-when-he-sees-one sort of reality. But the man has simply developed a very creative business model. Redknapp utilises his locus within the game to maximise his returns from the game. And, due to a prominent lack of prohibitory regulation, he has been able to get away with it. Until now?
Looking at some of 'Arry's earning options beyond his managerial salary, property concerns and betting activities based on inside information is a further indication of the complex matrix of characters whose names repeatedly crop up when one explores the murkier areas of the football sector. 'Arry prepares a weekly column for Rupert Murdoch's The Sun newspaper which will have absolutely no impact on that particular organ's reporting of the current fiasco. Obviously... Totally honest son Jamie is Sky Television's (and Murdoch's) disinformational talking head prior to Sky live matches. This man needs to attend finishing school as his body language and inability to control his pressure of speech reveals more than his paymasters would like - indeed, we have a private competition in the office on the first trader to spot where Jamie has placed his hard-earned dollar! 'Arry is also accommodated as a guest Sky expert whenever anything happens in the world of football whether he possesses the necessary knowledge or not. "So, 'Arry, Brazil have got the 2014 World Cup, what d'you think?". "The jobs a good'un at the end of the day, like. To be totally honest, you'd have to say they deserve it".
The other little earner for our multiple-money-maximising man is the transfer market. Investigative economists spot patterns and then attempt to jigsaw these nuggets of reality into a more complete holistic whole. Redknapp is involved in more transfer activity than any other manager and his signings are very often astute. Being an excellent reader of the game, the new players generally produce the desired effect on the field of play allowing 'Arry to achieve his limited footballing goals. Through the selective use of agents, it is widely accepted within the sport that Mr Redknapp is able to gain a slice of the transfer action and his performance on BBC's Panorama programme have hardly helped his legal counsel to be able to suggest otherwise. The evident side benefit of having a conveyor-belt transfer strategy is that the unscrupulous are able to repeatedly take their percentage on the majority of interactions.
What happens next? Well, firstly 'Arry is required to regain his poise. Yesterday, his home was searched in a dawn raid by the City of London police while, in total, 60 officers searched eight properties nationwide. The Pompey Five have been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and false accounting and they have been bailed until February. According to a Whitehall source, a number of soccer stars and agents have been identified as having offshore bank accounts which have not been properly declared. The source said: "We are likely to be talking about undisclosed millions".
Another source, close to the City of London inquiry, said: "It is much bigger than we thought". This reality does not quite correlate positively with 'Arry's over-confident assertion that: ""We all helped the police with their inquiries. But it doesn't directly concern me - it's other people involved... They have to arrest you to talk to you, for you to be in the police station. I think that's the end of it". In a neat spin on reality in The Sun, Redknapp distorts: "I have not been charged with anything and I have absolutely nothing to be concerned about". Apart from the arrest, that would be... Oh, and having the police trawl through all your business documentation, perhaps...?
That anything has happened at all is no thanks to the Premier League or the Football Association (FA). These arrests are separate to the Quest bungs whitewash and date back to a private tip-off last year rather than any proper policing by English football's regulatory bodies. Scudamore and Barwick couldn't detect fraud if it walked in and shook their hands - indeed, their business practices are seemingly based on such handshakes...
Of the others arrested, Mandaric and Storrie have been long term collaborators with 'Arry and the arms dealing Gaydamak's who back Pompey. Willie McKay is a bookmaker/ football agent/ horserace trainer who also goes back a fair few years with Redknapp. McKay spent several years trading out of Monaco, where he also assisted police inquiries into allegations of corruption in the game. The fifth member is Amdy Faye, a player who is currently on loan at Glasgow Rangers. Beyond these five, there are other people who should be sweating. Graeme Souness for one...
So, why have the Pompey Five been fingered? There is massive corruption within the game particularly in England. The links between betting markets and football outcomes are on a different strata of seriousness to the minor misdemeanours of our Five Heroes. In the same manner that the Premier League showed incredible blinkering to the wider reality when it kicked up its self-harming fuss relating to Carlos Tevez, the City of London police must be equally myopic if they believe that the Pompey Five are all that is wrong with the game.
Bitterly upset Mark Redknapp screached: "Why is this happening now when the England job is vacant? There was no need for them to come around like this". Yes folks, this story represents the latest in the media disinformational market known as 'The Next Permanent England Manager'. The bookmakers and their associative colleagues in the mainstream media love these markets as it allows the layers to pump money out of the masses by pressing the right neural spots. This mechanism whereby outright lies and rumours of lies are substituted for reality is a win-win situation for the perpetrators of the mass media scam. Short-selling the headline-grabbing names who have allegedly declared an interest in the England job while quietly trading the silent long-odds 'real' favourite is the template of choice. An example - Mourinho is as likely to be interested in the England job as Ian Paisley is in being pope. The same nonsense happened with Souness over the Wigan post and Paul Ince at Derby.
I digress.
"Oh No" said the female voice who answered the intercom at Rednapp's waterside mansion ('Arry was away with Rangers in Germany doing business). This crisis has the potential to be the biggest footballing own goal since George Graham. Yesterday's arrests relate to the earlier police raids at Pompey, Newcastle and Glasgow Rangers. The latter claim: "Rangers understand that a player was arrested at his home this morning on a matter totally unrelated to the business of Rangers Football Club". Really?
If a decision has been taken high up in the English establishment that this charade is to be something more than a final warning then the powers-that-be have chosen the tragicomedy comic book option. In the same manner that Iraqi enemies became Chemical Ali in an act of demonisation, the non-Sky media will have a field day with all those images of Redknapp and Mandaric, covering their mouths, mobiles in hand, match in progress, looking for all the world like an Eastend gangster and a Serbian mafiosi doing a bit of illicit business when, of course, nothing could be further from the truth.
There are fall guys and then there are fall guys. Unless football wishes for a crisis that will make calciopoli seem tame by comparison, this whole affair will need to be carefully and strategically spun out to a future irrelevance that will allow all parties to continue as before without any interruption to their business practices. If the authorities truly wish to bring down some aspect of the Redknapp empire then there are to be unintended consequences galore. We do not believe that it is in the interests of any of the key decision makers in this spectacular reality to proceed too determinedly.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Thursday, 29 November 2007
Wednesday, 28 November 2007
Learn To Burn
All management structures have their strengths and weaknesses. Any rating of an organisation must be founded on both the infrastructural robustness of the body and the interactions of the key individuals with their unique professional profiles. As it is in the wider world of business, so it is with football.
Certain entities yield greater creativity and innovation. When these beacons of professionalism underachieve, their normal overperformance demands that the error be noted. Goldman Sachs have recently struggled in the sub-prime quagmire and No 1's are not supposed to trade so poorly. And, last night, Arsène Wenger displayed a very rare lack of strategic thinking in playing half-a-team in what was actually a rather critical match in Arsenal's season.
Some of this might appear a bit trainspottery but Arsenal face a far more daunting new year because of last night's defeat and the very top managers and footballing associations generally plan strategically to avoid creating their own obstacles to success. Briefly in explanation of why Wenger got it so badly wrong. The 2nd Phase of the Champions League pitches the top-placed outfits against the runners-up with no team being able to play a side from the same country. By finishing in second place, Arsenal's opponents are likely to be chosen from the Porto, Real Madrid, Milan, Barcelona or Inter rather than the distinctly more preferable Rosenborg/Valencia/Schalke, Lazio/Olympiacos, Celtic/Shakhtar Donetsk, Lyon/Rangers, Roma and PSV/Fenerbache. Wenger's justification was the blooding of youngsters but any such gains are minimal in comparison with the holistic mistake. This strategic mismanagement is unusual from the generally watertight Mr Wenger. But it will matter. Arsenal would have had the luxury of a five week break from major events following a very difficult start to the year when tough games combine with the Of Cup Nations African. Instead a probably very difficult Champions League encounter awaits. If the Gunners survive this major test, their quarter final ties will land slap bang in the middle of a domestic run yielding Chelsea (away), Bolton (away), Liverpool (home), Man Utd (away). It would seem distinctly unlikely that the Arsenal squad will be able to challenge on both fronts throughout the constancy of a high profile window that the second half of the season now represents. And this is before the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) have any say in the matter.
Of course, this is merely a black mark against an impeccable record of the ultimate strategic planner among Premiership managers. Compare with Sir Ferguson who has repeatedly failed to analyse tournament strategies to maximise the chances for Man Utd in the Champions League. Indeed, last night's Ronaldo injury time winner saved the Reds an awkward trip to Rome where a defeat would very likely have produced a similar dilemma to that now faced by Arsenal.
A big picture overview of a tournament and its rules should form a fundamental analytical base from which to create a team's strategy for a season both with respect to the competition in question and the impact on other tournaments. While England were drowning in quicksand of their own creation, Germany were deliberately underperforming (having qualified with three games to spare) so that they might achieve a suitable position in the seedings to optimise their chances of success next summer. Similarly, the Czech Republic landed the contrarian trade of the season to date when hammering the global gamble on Cyprus in the final round of Euro 2008 Qualifiers. Professional traders failed to read the rulebook and made the assumption that the Czechs had nothing to play for. In fact, they had everything to play for in order to place themselves in the seemingly preferable mighty second tier of seeds for the summer extravaganza. While celebrating their strategic foresight, the Czechs had a rude awakening. By kicking off three hours later than the Czechs, the Germans were able to perform a preference reversal and chose the third tier of seeds as the preferable strategic option for the Finals. The fact that the Germans maintained their options between Seeding Levels 2 and 3 to maximise their tilting of the summer playing field while the English sloshed around with suitcases of money forlornly looking for salvation via bribery is typical of the holistic strategic differences in planning between the two nations. Germany is run by clear-sighted professionals; England is run by the bookmakers, sychophants and the incompetent.
In that it relates to this post, the Euro 2008 Seedings Chart is below with FIFA rankings in brackets:
Seeding Level 1: Austria (91) Switzerland (44) Greece (11) Netherlands (9)
Seeding Level 2: Italy (3) Czech Republic (6) Croatia (10) Sweden (24)
Seeding Level 3: Germany (5) Spain (4) Portugal (8) Romania (13)
Seeding Level 4: Russia (22) Poland (23) Turkey (16) France (7)
The science behind achieving the correct management structure in football is highly developed with MBA-style strategic thinking allowing innovative teams like Sevilla to succeed by establishing a hierarchy and a culture that dovetails with the football club itself. The flattened hierarchy works as an interlinked entity and every cog in the machine is replaceable - do not expect any downturn in form following Juande Ramos chasing the money. The transfer strategy is shared between manager and sporting director as part of a complex interlocked business structure. Arsenal have a similarly enlightened approach although the model is skewed to take account of Wenger's exquisite transfer policies. Less sustainable structures are the ones at Milan or Chelsea where oligarchical ownership sees the proprietor decide transfer policy with imposition of his selections being placed on the hapless manager. Surely part of Ancelotti's glumness has to be related to spending so much of his life in close proximity to Berlusconi and Galliani. In the absence of a suitable death, these hyper-owners pursue a strategy as long as it suits their life strategy. Clubs like Milan are safe as the club are branded alongside Berlusconi's political machine while one would make the assessment that Thaksin Shinawatra's devotion to the blue half of Manchester is a short-medium term publicity tactic.
We have chosen to exemplify Sevilla and Arsenal and admonish Milan, Chelsea and Man City both because it feels like a good thing to be doing and because fans should celebrate the teams who are utilising highly creative business strategies to succeed in a psychopathic sectoral environment. Neither Arsenal nor Sevilla abuse the betting markets as part of some kind of off-ledger grey market slush fund. Their infrastructure is sustainable. Milan too will survive until Berlusconi's (hopefully imminent) demise but what happens then? As for Man City, no comment...
We should also celebrate Arsenal and Sevilla because they limit the games exposure to all sorts of dirty money and financial shenanigans that form the core financial strategies of the operators behind the other teams. A remarkable feature of footballing corruption is how frequently it directly or indirectly mirrors the corruption endemic in wider society. While the mainstream media debates the legality or otherwise of some secluded political donation, the real criminality isn't even addressed. No true bottom-up democracy should allow political donations from businesspeople (nor indeed anyone else). This distortion of our democratic right should be made illegal and there should be state funding of the political parties in Britain. The media does not wish for us to focus on such matters. But why should the rich be able to buy political influence? In Victorian times, the slaveowner globalisers simply ran their business empires from the luxury of one of parliament's rooms for ex-public schoolboy MP's. The same individuals today prefer for MP's to perform their deeds by proxy. And the political funding issue is only one of many that demonstrate the inappropriate linkages that exist between capital and government. Take the Carlyle Group. This private equity company is renowned for sailing as close to the winds of legality as possible in the imposition of its innovative business model. By co-opting serving and recently serving government heads and ministers onto their visible and not-so-visible "boards", the Carlyle Group is able to benefit from insider trading. By basing one's trading strategy on known near-future infrastructural readjustments, rule changes, governmental reviews etc etc, the private equity firm is buying into a sector or a company at a very cheap price as the wider financial public is not yet aware of the soon-to-be-launched financial or regulatory breakpoint. Of course, this is a standard masonic template that has been employed across time but the rewards for successful implementation of a corrupt strategy of this type are far greater today. Lets have a swift glance at QinetiQ, once the ministry of defence's research wing. After being forewarned of the impending sale, the Carlyle Group bought in and they and the civil service managers of QinetiQ achieved handsome returns - Carlyle's £42 million investment yielding £374 million in three years while the establishment suits saw a two hundredfold increase in the value of their investment. This example of insider trading is illegal but par for the course. Abramovich behaves to much the same hidden agenda in football - the parallels are obvious.
Markets warp systems. Improperly policed and regulated, the platforms allow the psychopathic abuser of markets to develop skewed incentives and cornered markets, corrupt competitive advantages and criminalised core competencies, high stakes and short-termist trading strategies masquerading as a sustainable system based on capital. Wherever the free market allows money to distort the social incentives within a political system, a psychopathic template will become the infrastructure of choice for the individuals who utilise the libertarian nature of such a system to exploit their way to the top of the tree. Whether we are focusing on betting markets, bungs and oligarchs with their suitcases of money in the football sector or insider trading, cartelisation or monopolisation in the financial markets, we are faced with the same scenario.
Money destroys aesthetic and financial value which are its prime reason for existence in the first place.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Certain entities yield greater creativity and innovation. When these beacons of professionalism underachieve, their normal overperformance demands that the error be noted. Goldman Sachs have recently struggled in the sub-prime quagmire and No 1's are not supposed to trade so poorly. And, last night, Arsène Wenger displayed a very rare lack of strategic thinking in playing half-a-team in what was actually a rather critical match in Arsenal's season.
Some of this might appear a bit trainspottery but Arsenal face a far more daunting new year because of last night's defeat and the very top managers and footballing associations generally plan strategically to avoid creating their own obstacles to success. Briefly in explanation of why Wenger got it so badly wrong. The 2nd Phase of the Champions League pitches the top-placed outfits against the runners-up with no team being able to play a side from the same country. By finishing in second place, Arsenal's opponents are likely to be chosen from the Porto, Real Madrid, Milan, Barcelona or Inter rather than the distinctly more preferable Rosenborg/Valencia/Schalke, Lazio/Olympiacos, Celtic/Shakhtar Donetsk, Lyon/Rangers, Roma and PSV/Fenerbache. Wenger's justification was the blooding of youngsters but any such gains are minimal in comparison with the holistic mistake. This strategic mismanagement is unusual from the generally watertight Mr Wenger. But it will matter. Arsenal would have had the luxury of a five week break from major events following a very difficult start to the year when tough games combine with the Of Cup Nations African. Instead a probably very difficult Champions League encounter awaits. If the Gunners survive this major test, their quarter final ties will land slap bang in the middle of a domestic run yielding Chelsea (away), Bolton (away), Liverpool (home), Man Utd (away). It would seem distinctly unlikely that the Arsenal squad will be able to challenge on both fronts throughout the constancy of a high profile window that the second half of the season now represents. And this is before the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) have any say in the matter.
Of course, this is merely a black mark against an impeccable record of the ultimate strategic planner among Premiership managers. Compare with Sir Ferguson who has repeatedly failed to analyse tournament strategies to maximise the chances for Man Utd in the Champions League. Indeed, last night's Ronaldo injury time winner saved the Reds an awkward trip to Rome where a defeat would very likely have produced a similar dilemma to that now faced by Arsenal.
A big picture overview of a tournament and its rules should form a fundamental analytical base from which to create a team's strategy for a season both with respect to the competition in question and the impact on other tournaments. While England were drowning in quicksand of their own creation, Germany were deliberately underperforming (having qualified with three games to spare) so that they might achieve a suitable position in the seedings to optimise their chances of success next summer. Similarly, the Czech Republic landed the contrarian trade of the season to date when hammering the global gamble on Cyprus in the final round of Euro 2008 Qualifiers. Professional traders failed to read the rulebook and made the assumption that the Czechs had nothing to play for. In fact, they had everything to play for in order to place themselves in the seemingly preferable mighty second tier of seeds for the summer extravaganza. While celebrating their strategic foresight, the Czechs had a rude awakening. By kicking off three hours later than the Czechs, the Germans were able to perform a preference reversal and chose the third tier of seeds as the preferable strategic option for the Finals. The fact that the Germans maintained their options between Seeding Levels 2 and 3 to maximise their tilting of the summer playing field while the English sloshed around with suitcases of money forlornly looking for salvation via bribery is typical of the holistic strategic differences in planning between the two nations. Germany is run by clear-sighted professionals; England is run by the bookmakers, sychophants and the incompetent.
In that it relates to this post, the Euro 2008 Seedings Chart is below with FIFA rankings in brackets:
Seeding Level 1: Austria (91) Switzerland (44) Greece (11) Netherlands (9)
Seeding Level 2: Italy (3) Czech Republic (6) Croatia (10) Sweden (24)
Seeding Level 3: Germany (5) Spain (4) Portugal (8) Romania (13)
Seeding Level 4: Russia (22) Poland (23) Turkey (16) France (7)
The science behind achieving the correct management structure in football is highly developed with MBA-style strategic thinking allowing innovative teams like Sevilla to succeed by establishing a hierarchy and a culture that dovetails with the football club itself. The flattened hierarchy works as an interlinked entity and every cog in the machine is replaceable - do not expect any downturn in form following Juande Ramos chasing the money. The transfer strategy is shared between manager and sporting director as part of a complex interlocked business structure. Arsenal have a similarly enlightened approach although the model is skewed to take account of Wenger's exquisite transfer policies. Less sustainable structures are the ones at Milan or Chelsea where oligarchical ownership sees the proprietor decide transfer policy with imposition of his selections being placed on the hapless manager. Surely part of Ancelotti's glumness has to be related to spending so much of his life in close proximity to Berlusconi and Galliani. In the absence of a suitable death, these hyper-owners pursue a strategy as long as it suits their life strategy. Clubs like Milan are safe as the club are branded alongside Berlusconi's political machine while one would make the assessment that Thaksin Shinawatra's devotion to the blue half of Manchester is a short-medium term publicity tactic.
We have chosen to exemplify Sevilla and Arsenal and admonish Milan, Chelsea and Man City both because it feels like a good thing to be doing and because fans should celebrate the teams who are utilising highly creative business strategies to succeed in a psychopathic sectoral environment. Neither Arsenal nor Sevilla abuse the betting markets as part of some kind of off-ledger grey market slush fund. Their infrastructure is sustainable. Milan too will survive until Berlusconi's (hopefully imminent) demise but what happens then? As for Man City, no comment...
We should also celebrate Arsenal and Sevilla because they limit the games exposure to all sorts of dirty money and financial shenanigans that form the core financial strategies of the operators behind the other teams. A remarkable feature of footballing corruption is how frequently it directly or indirectly mirrors the corruption endemic in wider society. While the mainstream media debates the legality or otherwise of some secluded political donation, the real criminality isn't even addressed. No true bottom-up democracy should allow political donations from businesspeople (nor indeed anyone else). This distortion of our democratic right should be made illegal and there should be state funding of the political parties in Britain. The media does not wish for us to focus on such matters. But why should the rich be able to buy political influence? In Victorian times, the slaveowner globalisers simply ran their business empires from the luxury of one of parliament's rooms for ex-public schoolboy MP's. The same individuals today prefer for MP's to perform their deeds by proxy. And the political funding issue is only one of many that demonstrate the inappropriate linkages that exist between capital and government. Take the Carlyle Group. This private equity company is renowned for sailing as close to the winds of legality as possible in the imposition of its innovative business model. By co-opting serving and recently serving government heads and ministers onto their visible and not-so-visible "boards", the Carlyle Group is able to benefit from insider trading. By basing one's trading strategy on known near-future infrastructural readjustments, rule changes, governmental reviews etc etc, the private equity firm is buying into a sector or a company at a very cheap price as the wider financial public is not yet aware of the soon-to-be-launched financial or regulatory breakpoint. Of course, this is a standard masonic template that has been employed across time but the rewards for successful implementation of a corrupt strategy of this type are far greater today. Lets have a swift glance at QinetiQ, once the ministry of defence's research wing. After being forewarned of the impending sale, the Carlyle Group bought in and they and the civil service managers of QinetiQ achieved handsome returns - Carlyle's £42 million investment yielding £374 million in three years while the establishment suits saw a two hundredfold increase in the value of their investment. This example of insider trading is illegal but par for the course. Abramovich behaves to much the same hidden agenda in football - the parallels are obvious.
Markets warp systems. Improperly policed and regulated, the platforms allow the psychopathic abuser of markets to develop skewed incentives and cornered markets, corrupt competitive advantages and criminalised core competencies, high stakes and short-termist trading strategies masquerading as a sustainable system based on capital. Wherever the free market allows money to distort the social incentives within a political system, a psychopathic template will become the infrastructure of choice for the individuals who utilise the libertarian nature of such a system to exploit their way to the top of the tree. Whether we are focusing on betting markets, bungs and oligarchs with their suitcases of money in the football sector or insider trading, cartelisation or monopolisation in the financial markets, we are faced with the same scenario.
Money destroys aesthetic and financial value which are its prime reason for existence in the first place.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Wednesday, 21 November 2007
FA Claims Mike Newell Is An Al-Qaeda Operative!
Events over the last seven days encapsulate in microcosm the rampant corruption and associated loss of any vestige of integrity in the professional football world. Throughout this week, virtually all of the major areas of concern within the game have enjoyed their window in the public spotlight. From oligarchs to the Thai elections, from Quest and the bungs inquiry to heavily corrupted global spectacular matches, the state of the game has been laid bare for all to see.
Very few matches in the highly corrupted Euro 2008 Group E have been legitimate events. We brought this to the attention of readers last season and the situation has deteriorated in the intervening period to the extent that the global audience was treated to two matches (Russia/England and Israel/Russia) that were heavily externalised matches. The outcomes of both these matches were determined by illicit money and, as in the norm on such occasions, the visuals patently demonstrated the underworld dynamics.
But, hidden behind the media glare of the problematic nature of English qualification, there have been other machinations indicative of the state of the game.
We have posted on numerous previous occasions that the Quest Inquiry into bungs in football was a whitewash. From the perspective of the regulatory power bodies overseeing English football, the whole charade has been a nightmare. Conflicting rules and regulations have been revealed; the selective imposition of punishment has been exposed as a standard practice; the iceberg of footballing corruption has been lifted out of the water to a degree. It was evident months ago that there was no feasible and logical route for the FA and the Premier League to take that might validate their status as suitable guardians of the English game and so they resorted to spin, half-truths, rumour and intrigue. The final piece of this spectacular spun reality occurred at the end of last week when it was quietly announced that a few agents associated with Mike Newell and Luton Town FC had forgotten to sign a piece of paper and that, apart from this, everything was fine and dandy in Scudamore's and Barwick's worlds.
New Labour have perfected the art of burying away bad news and the FA's Blairite contortions were chosen for public release on the day prior to the critical Euro 2008Qualifiers and on the morning of England's game in Vienna. Only xmas day would have been more opaque...
And what is the result of PC Plod's sortie through the grey underground world of football? The corruption still exists in suspended animation which undermines any suspension in our disbelief at the attempts to clean up the game.
Since Mike Newell first went public and the BBC Panorama programme exposed certain operators within the game, there has been a momentum to peripheralise any real impact of the inquiry. The outcomes to date are:
i) Mike Newell was sacked as Luton Town manager as we predicted.
ii) Luton Town were relegated (as we also predicted).
iii) The Quest inquiry is now targeting six agents involved with transfers to and from Luton.
Allardyce, Bond, Arneson, Redknapp, Souness, Zahavi, McKay, Silkman etc do not appear to have had their strategies markedly disrupted by the inquiry. The excitement created by the City of London police raids at Newcastle, Portsmouth and Glasgow Rangers together with the arrest of a still-unnamed 61 year old (he may even be 62 by now) for money laundering have been carefully secreted in the unsolved cases file. None of the threats of legal action from any of those individuals originally fingered by BBC have come to fruition. But, apparently, we are expected to believe that all is well with the game because anybody related to Luton is getting hammered. Without going in to fulsome details - see David Conn's excellent post in today's Guardian for that (http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/11/21/the_book_thrown_at_luton_stops.html) - the agents did absolutely nothing wrong. It was the rules of the English game that were swiss-cheesed with loopholes and inconsistencies. In effect, the Luton Six are being punished for failing to sign a document which, had they signed, would have been in breach of FA rules. Catch 22 or what...?
Then again, these are from the same rulebook which determines that the transfer of Carlos Tevez to West Ham United was a third party arrangement whereas the identical transfer to Manchester United was fair dinkum. Just how blind?
The degree of illegality with regard to Luton and the agents, if indeed anything outrightly illegal has occurred, is totally insignificant compared with the massive corruptions in the game by the Premier League, the FA, bookmakers and individual players and managers. By spinning their reality that punishing some small-town southern non-entity club proves that the game is being properly policed, the authorities make the error of mistaking fans for fools.
Over half the teams in the English Premiership are now under the full or partial yoke of the hyper-owners and the international break has presented us with some revealing insights into the worlds of the oligarchs and the offshore-financial-heads. Previously we have attempted to puncture the bubble of short-term optimism of the fans at the clubs targeted by exposing the lack of robustness of the longer term strategy of the hyper-owners from a financial perspective. Put simply, things will improve for a while but then the words "shit" and "fan" will come into close configuration. Lets check a few of the destabilisation scenarios.
* The billionaire barber buying Birmingham has blown it with Bruce who has finally tired of the distrustful business practices of the Macau casino owner. Bruce has gone to Wigan and Birmingham are rudderless. If the sale isn't completed by December 23rd then Sullivan is throwing his toys out of the pram and Birmingham will be left with half a season to rebuild a club culture.
* Newcastle are imploding. There are internalised cliques within the hierarchy and the owner's finances remain stretched making Mike Ashley a not-so-hyper-owner after all. In fact, the only thing going right at Newcastle is that the club are being paid oodles of cash by the FA, FIFA and any other regulatory authority that might be culpable for Michael Owen's hypochondriachal pseudo-injuries.
* Shinawatra continues to utilise Manchester City as an electionioneering vehicle for the forthcoming Thai elections. The signing of three Thai players at a glitzy Bangkok launch, by pure fluke, was coincident with the final day of candidate registration for the December election in Thailand. During his video address, the Crooked One stated without any hint of irony: "The new government must govern for the many, not just for the few". For the man that looted his country's treasury while he was in charge, this is a bit rich in the doublespeak department. Indeed, the Thai authorities have responded by seizing the assets of Shinawatra's children (who are also Man City board members). The $355 million in fines and taxes should affect Eriksson's January transfer window budget! The authorities are targeting Shinawatra's children after they acquired shares in Shin Corp at just 1 baht apiece through an offshore company established by their father. These self same shares were later sold to Singapore's Temasek at 49 baht in an outrageous piece of corruption. The tax-free Shin sale enraged Thailand's urban middle-class voters who staged Bangkok street demonstrations leading to the overthrow of Shinawatra. Only the most myopic of Man City fan will be unable to see where all this is leading for their currently overperforming team. Shinawatra also chose the international break to announce himself as the saviour of the young who are addicted to drugs. Having directly been responsible for 2500 deaths of supposed drug dealers in a shoot-to-kill policy while Thai Premier, the Gooch gang in Moss Side should be on their guard.
* Also in the international window, Usmanov attempted a PR exercise of his own through a revealing series of emails between his good self and The Guardian. The interaction was revealing because of Usmanov's responses to the libel and slander potentially contained in various blog and media allegations. People falling from windows to their death, a heroin dealing business acquaintance, mafia links, a rape conviction, baby boiling accomplices would normally be sufficient for one to use the justice system to clear one's name. But not for Mr Usmanov. Typical of all individuals who would prefer to keep their dodgy business and life practices private, Usmanov hides behind the excuse that he would willingly have his day in court if only he could find the time. Considering the financial rewards of a successful prosecution, we can only assume that the big boy is guilty as charged. The utilisation of the law (or not) is often an indicator of truths (think Allardyce and his threats over the BBC Panorama programme, for instance).
Which brings us back to tonight's national celebration of all things English at the food mall that is the New Wembley stadium.
There are a multitude of things worthy of celebration. A corrupt and tainted semi-triumph for the English football team is not one of them.
Always assuming that Roman doesn't have any say in the matter and the English don't self-destruct trying to achieve the draw the bookmakers are craving, that is...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Very few matches in the highly corrupted Euro 2008 Group E have been legitimate events. We brought this to the attention of readers last season and the situation has deteriorated in the intervening period to the extent that the global audience was treated to two matches (Russia/England and Israel/Russia) that were heavily externalised matches. The outcomes of both these matches were determined by illicit money and, as in the norm on such occasions, the visuals patently demonstrated the underworld dynamics.
But, hidden behind the media glare of the problematic nature of English qualification, there have been other machinations indicative of the state of the game.
We have posted on numerous previous occasions that the Quest Inquiry into bungs in football was a whitewash. From the perspective of the regulatory power bodies overseeing English football, the whole charade has been a nightmare. Conflicting rules and regulations have been revealed; the selective imposition of punishment has been exposed as a standard practice; the iceberg of footballing corruption has been lifted out of the water to a degree. It was evident months ago that there was no feasible and logical route for the FA and the Premier League to take that might validate their status as suitable guardians of the English game and so they resorted to spin, half-truths, rumour and intrigue. The final piece of this spectacular spun reality occurred at the end of last week when it was quietly announced that a few agents associated with Mike Newell and Luton Town FC had forgotten to sign a piece of paper and that, apart from this, everything was fine and dandy in Scudamore's and Barwick's worlds.
New Labour have perfected the art of burying away bad news and the FA's Blairite contortions were chosen for public release on the day prior to the critical Euro 2008Qualifiers and on the morning of England's game in Vienna. Only xmas day would have been more opaque...
And what is the result of PC Plod's sortie through the grey underground world of football? The corruption still exists in suspended animation which undermines any suspension in our disbelief at the attempts to clean up the game.
Since Mike Newell first went public and the BBC Panorama programme exposed certain operators within the game, there has been a momentum to peripheralise any real impact of the inquiry. The outcomes to date are:
i) Mike Newell was sacked as Luton Town manager as we predicted.
ii) Luton Town were relegated (as we also predicted).
iii) The Quest inquiry is now targeting six agents involved with transfers to and from Luton.
Allardyce, Bond, Arneson, Redknapp, Souness, Zahavi, McKay, Silkman etc do not appear to have had their strategies markedly disrupted by the inquiry. The excitement created by the City of London police raids at Newcastle, Portsmouth and Glasgow Rangers together with the arrest of a still-unnamed 61 year old (he may even be 62 by now) for money laundering have been carefully secreted in the unsolved cases file. None of the threats of legal action from any of those individuals originally fingered by BBC have come to fruition. But, apparently, we are expected to believe that all is well with the game because anybody related to Luton is getting hammered. Without going in to fulsome details - see David Conn's excellent post in today's Guardian for that (http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/2007/11/21/the_book_thrown_at_luton_stops.html) - the agents did absolutely nothing wrong. It was the rules of the English game that were swiss-cheesed with loopholes and inconsistencies. In effect, the Luton Six are being punished for failing to sign a document which, had they signed, would have been in breach of FA rules. Catch 22 or what...?
Then again, these are from the same rulebook which determines that the transfer of Carlos Tevez to West Ham United was a third party arrangement whereas the identical transfer to Manchester United was fair dinkum. Just how blind?
The degree of illegality with regard to Luton and the agents, if indeed anything outrightly illegal has occurred, is totally insignificant compared with the massive corruptions in the game by the Premier League, the FA, bookmakers and individual players and managers. By spinning their reality that punishing some small-town southern non-entity club proves that the game is being properly policed, the authorities make the error of mistaking fans for fools.
Over half the teams in the English Premiership are now under the full or partial yoke of the hyper-owners and the international break has presented us with some revealing insights into the worlds of the oligarchs and the offshore-financial-heads. Previously we have attempted to puncture the bubble of short-term optimism of the fans at the clubs targeted by exposing the lack of robustness of the longer term strategy of the hyper-owners from a financial perspective. Put simply, things will improve for a while but then the words "shit" and "fan" will come into close configuration. Lets check a few of the destabilisation scenarios.
* The billionaire barber buying Birmingham has blown it with Bruce who has finally tired of the distrustful business practices of the Macau casino owner. Bruce has gone to Wigan and Birmingham are rudderless. If the sale isn't completed by December 23rd then Sullivan is throwing his toys out of the pram and Birmingham will be left with half a season to rebuild a club culture.
* Newcastle are imploding. There are internalised cliques within the hierarchy and the owner's finances remain stretched making Mike Ashley a not-so-hyper-owner after all. In fact, the only thing going right at Newcastle is that the club are being paid oodles of cash by the FA, FIFA and any other regulatory authority that might be culpable for Michael Owen's hypochondriachal pseudo-injuries.
* Shinawatra continues to utilise Manchester City as an electionioneering vehicle for the forthcoming Thai elections. The signing of three Thai players at a glitzy Bangkok launch, by pure fluke, was coincident with the final day of candidate registration for the December election in Thailand. During his video address, the Crooked One stated without any hint of irony: "The new government must govern for the many, not just for the few". For the man that looted his country's treasury while he was in charge, this is a bit rich in the doublespeak department. Indeed, the Thai authorities have responded by seizing the assets of Shinawatra's children (who are also Man City board members). The $355 million in fines and taxes should affect Eriksson's January transfer window budget! The authorities are targeting Shinawatra's children after they acquired shares in Shin Corp at just 1 baht apiece through an offshore company established by their father. These self same shares were later sold to Singapore's Temasek at 49 baht in an outrageous piece of corruption. The tax-free Shin sale enraged Thailand's urban middle-class voters who staged Bangkok street demonstrations leading to the overthrow of Shinawatra. Only the most myopic of Man City fan will be unable to see where all this is leading for their currently overperforming team. Shinawatra also chose the international break to announce himself as the saviour of the young who are addicted to drugs. Having directly been responsible for 2500 deaths of supposed drug dealers in a shoot-to-kill policy while Thai Premier, the Gooch gang in Moss Side should be on their guard.
* Also in the international window, Usmanov attempted a PR exercise of his own through a revealing series of emails between his good self and The Guardian. The interaction was revealing because of Usmanov's responses to the libel and slander potentially contained in various blog and media allegations. People falling from windows to their death, a heroin dealing business acquaintance, mafia links, a rape conviction, baby boiling accomplices would normally be sufficient for one to use the justice system to clear one's name. But not for Mr Usmanov. Typical of all individuals who would prefer to keep their dodgy business and life practices private, Usmanov hides behind the excuse that he would willingly have his day in court if only he could find the time. Considering the financial rewards of a successful prosecution, we can only assume that the big boy is guilty as charged. The utilisation of the law (or not) is often an indicator of truths (think Allardyce and his threats over the BBC Panorama programme, for instance).
Which brings us back to tonight's national celebration of all things English at the food mall that is the New Wembley stadium.
There are a multitude of things worthy of celebration. A corrupt and tainted semi-triumph for the English football team is not one of them.
Always assuming that Roman doesn't have any say in the matter and the English don't self-destruct trying to achieve the draw the bookmakers are craving, that is...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Wednesday, 3 October 2007
What's Yours Worth?
An investment banker once told me: "If you have a minority paying for the majority, you aren't going to get a vote for change". So it is with gambling. A prime example of this is provided by the attitude of the vast majority of European betting firms to in-running markets.
From the perspective of the punter, in-running markets offer many benefits. All pre-match imponderables resolve themselves in front of your eyes in real-time and, additionally, the playing field is considerably levelled by the fact that the market makers are seeing pretty much the same visuals as the leisure traders. Obviously, the bookmakers incorporate advantages into this more meritocratic environment - live streaming of games on Betfair is delayed by up to thirty seconds, for example, and trading rooms have access to a multiplicity of camera angles to bestow the seeds of benefit. A further tilt to the bookies is that inside information relating to the match may remain hidden from leisure viewers until the explosive nature of such information explodes into reality via a penalty kick or a Michael Owen special. But, despite such provisos, the action is analysable to all.
Now, bookmakers despise meritocracy in the same manner that Shinawatra does financial probity. Prior to a game, the bookmakers and brokers have an informational advantage that is only replicated by top notch market analysts and insider traders. By the time kick off comes around, any layer worth their salt is aware of the corrupt mechanisms underpinning an event. But, in a world of fragmented cartelisation, the ownership of the outcomes of events is a battleground where the individual power lobbies fight for control of the match, the market and, ultimately, the profits. For this reason, all but the most psychopathic of the trading firms are forced into taking hedging positions in the period leading up to kick off UNLESS they have total control of the match in question. This bookmaker's dilemma influences their in-running strategy.
Trading in-running is more akin to a poker market than a football one. Trading must be undertaken at speed and bluff positions analysed intuitively using market memory and aspects of forensic psychology. The difference in strategy between the European and Asian firms is palpable. All of the Asian firms offer highly liquid real-time in-running markets with minimal margins that enable all traders to operate without the presence of industry-generated financial millstones. They also offer the choice of the 3-way fixed odds markets (home/away/draw) and the 2-way Asian handicap markets (buy/sell). The European firms, in contrast, do not allow any 2-way markets without prohibitive margins that are sometimes as high as ten times those offered in the Far East. This leaning towards a three runner race rather than a two runner event is indicative of the European layer's general attitude. The Europeans are pitiful in their in-running analysis - as Schecter said: "The more they watched, the less they knew". When bookmakers are not able to entirely corrupt an event, there are three fall-back strategies available to them. Firstly, they would choose to randomise the event as the horseracing industry does with the handicapping system that penalises historical good performance. Their second option is to nudge punters in the direction of financially inappropriate markets. For example, last night Dietrological had one of our rare losing positions - it was on the Lyon versus Rangers Champions League match. Pre-match, we were with Lyonnais but, by the interval, we were convinced that Rémy Vercoutre had been taking lessons from one Fabian Barthez - the Glaswegians had only three shots on target in the game and Rémy was conspicuous by his absence from the ball's proximity in each case. During the half time interval, we wished to hedge our position. In Europe, we were flummoxed by the bookmakers who only provided us with the option of trading either on the draw or backing Rangers. We had no view on the eventual outcome and merely wished to get off Lyon. The only manner that this hedge was able to be enacted was via a mixture of trading on the handicap markets in Asia and on the spread markets (despite their horrendous margins) in London. The third option utilised by bookmakers on events outside their control is to either refuse to price the event up in the first place or to refuse to pay out winnings based on an assessment that if you know something that they don't, you must be privy to inside information. The bookmakers have a highly bipolar relationship with inside information - in their hands, it is creative criminality to enhance returns to shareholders; in the hands of anybody else, it is a travesty of justice.
The liquidity of the in-running markets is massive - as much money is traded while the game is in motion as in the week leading up to the match. Aside from the incidence of an internally controlled event, the level playing field presents an opportunity for the most professional market participants to succeed to the detriment of the less skilled competitors. On the professional and profitable side, you have the top analysts and the Asian market makers; on the other side, you have the European bookmakers and the leisure punters. Unable to compete with the former, the European layers are forced to target mug money for their in-running bookmaking.
Dietrological utilise inside information, neural networks and our Unified Trading Model (UTM) to analyse events. Our pre-match portfolio is created incorporating each of these elements with inside information being responsible for approximately 50% of our stances, black box technologies 15% and the UTM 35%. We have developed in-house a specific neural net for live events which is currently of minimal value to our trading operation. This is outrageous. The European firms either refuse to offer the markets without scandalous margins or they refuse to allow professionals to trade - try ringing around Ladbrokes, Chandler, Paddy Power, Hills and the rest of them asking if they close winning accounts. Unless you are backed by muscle, Asia is an equally challenging environment. We use just one market maker in the Far East that we have developed a trusting relationship with over the years. This company is the exception that proves the rule that all Asian accounts are likely to be compromised by non-payment or a timely disappearance underground as they oscillate between different territories paying backhanders to the likes of Shinawatra so as to be able to bank their illicit gains. Earlier this year, leading Asian layer Pointbet ran off with the money of their clients and, several years ago, 3StarBet did the same only to continually reinvent itself anagrammatically as Bet3Star, StarBet3 and 3BetStar! All leisure punters must take care with any firm that seems to offer in-running Asian handicap markets without a prohibitive margin. A prime example of this is 10Bet. Despite their London address, 10Bet are based offshore and, similarly to Pointbet, they utilise a ghost address in Europe to disguise their geographical location. The only way to get your winnings and, indeed, any deposit back from these charlatans is to threaten legal action, a baseball bat or both!
So, what are we to do? We have created an amazing in-running black box trading model and, yet, there is not one publicly-available environment anywhere on the planet that allows a non-criminalised, financially meritocratic platform for trading our model.
In a final lunacy, our beloved government has brought to law The Gambling Act 2005, which has allowed the bookmakers access to the airwaves to promote their addictive but corrupt wares, but does absolutely nothing to protect punters. For instance, the current Ladbrokes advert which enables Ian Wright, Ally McCoist, Jimmy Hill, Chris Kamara and Lee Dixon to sell their collective souls for a dollar makes no mention of the fact that Ladbrokes (like all casinos and traditional bookmakers) do not allow winning accounts which effectively means that any visit to such an establishment (online or off) represents an acceptance of voluntary taxation to the private sector. Entertainingly, in the advert the lads discuss the merits of Liverpool, Chelsea and Newcastle winning the Premiership which creatively omits the only two teams that are likely to win the title. Such adverts depart a significant distance from the truth.
The government has proactively provided a foundation for an underworld, a cartel, a massive corruption, a reality with a particularly sinister template - depending upon where you stand, the British gambling sector may be any or all of these things.
In the twisted world of governmental marketing, that is your fondest dream in case you haven't noticed.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
From the perspective of the punter, in-running markets offer many benefits. All pre-match imponderables resolve themselves in front of your eyes in real-time and, additionally, the playing field is considerably levelled by the fact that the market makers are seeing pretty much the same visuals as the leisure traders. Obviously, the bookmakers incorporate advantages into this more meritocratic environment - live streaming of games on Betfair is delayed by up to thirty seconds, for example, and trading rooms have access to a multiplicity of camera angles to bestow the seeds of benefit. A further tilt to the bookies is that inside information relating to the match may remain hidden from leisure viewers until the explosive nature of such information explodes into reality via a penalty kick or a Michael Owen special. But, despite such provisos, the action is analysable to all.
Now, bookmakers despise meritocracy in the same manner that Shinawatra does financial probity. Prior to a game, the bookmakers and brokers have an informational advantage that is only replicated by top notch market analysts and insider traders. By the time kick off comes around, any layer worth their salt is aware of the corrupt mechanisms underpinning an event. But, in a world of fragmented cartelisation, the ownership of the outcomes of events is a battleground where the individual power lobbies fight for control of the match, the market and, ultimately, the profits. For this reason, all but the most psychopathic of the trading firms are forced into taking hedging positions in the period leading up to kick off UNLESS they have total control of the match in question. This bookmaker's dilemma influences their in-running strategy.
Trading in-running is more akin to a poker market than a football one. Trading must be undertaken at speed and bluff positions analysed intuitively using market memory and aspects of forensic psychology. The difference in strategy between the European and Asian firms is palpable. All of the Asian firms offer highly liquid real-time in-running markets with minimal margins that enable all traders to operate without the presence of industry-generated financial millstones. They also offer the choice of the 3-way fixed odds markets (home/away/draw) and the 2-way Asian handicap markets (buy/sell). The European firms, in contrast, do not allow any 2-way markets without prohibitive margins that are sometimes as high as ten times those offered in the Far East. This leaning towards a three runner race rather than a two runner event is indicative of the European layer's general attitude. The Europeans are pitiful in their in-running analysis - as Schecter said: "The more they watched, the less they knew". When bookmakers are not able to entirely corrupt an event, there are three fall-back strategies available to them. Firstly, they would choose to randomise the event as the horseracing industry does with the handicapping system that penalises historical good performance. Their second option is to nudge punters in the direction of financially inappropriate markets. For example, last night Dietrological had one of our rare losing positions - it was on the Lyon versus Rangers Champions League match. Pre-match, we were with Lyonnais but, by the interval, we were convinced that Rémy Vercoutre had been taking lessons from one Fabian Barthez - the Glaswegians had only three shots on target in the game and Rémy was conspicuous by his absence from the ball's proximity in each case. During the half time interval, we wished to hedge our position. In Europe, we were flummoxed by the bookmakers who only provided us with the option of trading either on the draw or backing Rangers. We had no view on the eventual outcome and merely wished to get off Lyon. The only manner that this hedge was able to be enacted was via a mixture of trading on the handicap markets in Asia and on the spread markets (despite their horrendous margins) in London. The third option utilised by bookmakers on events outside their control is to either refuse to price the event up in the first place or to refuse to pay out winnings based on an assessment that if you know something that they don't, you must be privy to inside information. The bookmakers have a highly bipolar relationship with inside information - in their hands, it is creative criminality to enhance returns to shareholders; in the hands of anybody else, it is a travesty of justice.
The liquidity of the in-running markets is massive - as much money is traded while the game is in motion as in the week leading up to the match. Aside from the incidence of an internally controlled event, the level playing field presents an opportunity for the most professional market participants to succeed to the detriment of the less skilled competitors. On the professional and profitable side, you have the top analysts and the Asian market makers; on the other side, you have the European bookmakers and the leisure punters. Unable to compete with the former, the European layers are forced to target mug money for their in-running bookmaking.
Dietrological utilise inside information, neural networks and our Unified Trading Model (UTM) to analyse events. Our pre-match portfolio is created incorporating each of these elements with inside information being responsible for approximately 50% of our stances, black box technologies 15% and the UTM 35%. We have developed in-house a specific neural net for live events which is currently of minimal value to our trading operation. This is outrageous. The European firms either refuse to offer the markets without scandalous margins or they refuse to allow professionals to trade - try ringing around Ladbrokes, Chandler, Paddy Power, Hills and the rest of them asking if they close winning accounts. Unless you are backed by muscle, Asia is an equally challenging environment. We use just one market maker in the Far East that we have developed a trusting relationship with over the years. This company is the exception that proves the rule that all Asian accounts are likely to be compromised by non-payment or a timely disappearance underground as they oscillate between different territories paying backhanders to the likes of Shinawatra so as to be able to bank their illicit gains. Earlier this year, leading Asian layer Pointbet ran off with the money of their clients and, several years ago, 3StarBet did the same only to continually reinvent itself anagrammatically as Bet3Star, StarBet3 and 3BetStar! All leisure punters must take care with any firm that seems to offer in-running Asian handicap markets without a prohibitive margin. A prime example of this is 10Bet. Despite their London address, 10Bet are based offshore and, similarly to Pointbet, they utilise a ghost address in Europe to disguise their geographical location. The only way to get your winnings and, indeed, any deposit back from these charlatans is to threaten legal action, a baseball bat or both!
So, what are we to do? We have created an amazing in-running black box trading model and, yet, there is not one publicly-available environment anywhere on the planet that allows a non-criminalised, financially meritocratic platform for trading our model.
In a final lunacy, our beloved government has brought to law The Gambling Act 2005, which has allowed the bookmakers access to the airwaves to promote their addictive but corrupt wares, but does absolutely nothing to protect punters. For instance, the current Ladbrokes advert which enables Ian Wright, Ally McCoist, Jimmy Hill, Chris Kamara and Lee Dixon to sell their collective souls for a dollar makes no mention of the fact that Ladbrokes (like all casinos and traditional bookmakers) do not allow winning accounts which effectively means that any visit to such an establishment (online or off) represents an acceptance of voluntary taxation to the private sector. Entertainingly, in the advert the lads discuss the merits of Liverpool, Chelsea and Newcastle winning the Premiership which creatively omits the only two teams that are likely to win the title. Such adverts depart a significant distance from the truth.
The government has proactively provided a foundation for an underworld, a cartel, a massive corruption, a reality with a particularly sinister template - depending upon where you stand, the British gambling sector may be any or all of these things.
In the twisted world of governmental marketing, that is your fondest dream in case you haven't noticed.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Monday, 27 August 2007
The Sky's The Limit On Premiership Corruption
On the last two weekends, Sky's Super Sunday matches have yielded incredibly corrupt global betting events that clearly exhibit the power play between the different market makers as they seek and attempt to gain proprietary control of these high profile matches.
The key aspect to Sky's heavily biased and manipulative televised output is their over confidence in the security of their control of the events under their warped jurisdiction. One might think that some effort might be made to disguise the corruption but Sky seem to glorify in it.
For example, lets look at the Sky choice of summarisers for the Man United v Tottenham match - Jamie ("I really believe this") Redknapp and Graeme Souness. Thinking back to the Quest bungs inquiry and the City of London Police raids on Portsmouth, Newcastle and Glasgow Rangers (particularly relating to the scam of a transfer of Boumsong to the Geordies from Ibrox overseen by Souness), are these the types of individual that Sky should have the arrogance to place on our screens to provide the pre-match and half-time disinformation? As we have posted previously, four of the seven points and concerns raised by Lord Stevens related to Harry Redknapp and/or Portsmouth - there was even that peculiarly specific point linking Redknapp to Glasgow based bookmaker, horserace trainer and football agent, Willie McKay. Sky totally taps into this semi-masonic structure featuring corrupt individuals from Glasgow and East London and, if they were able to step back and view how their media operation might be observed by outsiders, they would see that these inappropriate choices of talking head might just be noticed by the ever alert footballing public.
Of course, Sky don't give a damn and why should they when they exhibit a psychopathic control over the English game. Sky's focus on pundits from a few key geographical and business areas is highly revealing. If you can be bothered, check how many of Sky's "expert" summarisers are Londoners, Liverpudlians or Glaswegian - Reid, Redknapp, Walsh, Merson, McInally, Cottee, Thompson, Souness, Gale, Nicholas, Gray, Lampard etc etc etc. Furthermore, the same clubs keep resurfacing in the spectrum of Sky's output - West Ham United, Glasgow Rangers, Portsmouth, for example and we could, if we so wished, tell you which casino in London you would be most likely to find these operators relaxing during their leisure time.
Now, if it was merely the case that Sky people were giving jobs to their mates then one could, perhaps, accept it as a standard example of the lack of meritocracy that exists throughout the English media. Unfortunately, the template is far more manipulative than that.
Rob Styles made two errors in the Liverpool v Chelsea match. These errors worked against the proprietary trading positions taken on the global betting markets by Skybet and their associated market manipulators. Andy Gray's apoplexy was worthy of note. Howard Webb yesterday avoided giving Tottenham either of two potential penalties. The point isn't particularly whether these decisions were correct (in our estimation, one was and one wasn't) but that the Sky post-match summary featured a gloating Andy Gray who totally focused on just one of these decisions (the handball that wasn't) and the entirely pointless argument of whether Carlos Tevez deflected the ball for United's goal. Now, we are sure that you will be interested in the background to this nonsense.
Sky took huge trading positions on a United victory yesterday targeting some of the major European and Asian bookmakers as they sought to make up for their losses of the previous week. Indeed, the markets were so volatile that William Hill suspended betting in-running from the twenty minute mark until half-time. Souness and Redknapp offered verbal manipulations to persuade the leisure punter to put their hard-earned cash in loss-inducing markets and Sky were left with that warm glow that always results from a successful betting scam. It is an interesting aside that when peculiar betting patterns are related to an insider's corruption, there is no public inquiry. If you or I are lucky enough to benefit from a similar piece of market manipulation then alarm bills ring and there is a chance that winnings will not be paid out. Sky raised the media profile of this match from the moment they realised that they had ultimate control in the event - Martin Jol and the managerial crisis, the focus on Robinson's goalkeeping faux pas, Gabriel Heinze and the Premier League and Berbatov's supposed move to Manchester United all ratcheted up the betting turnover.
Will Webb be vilified throughout the media before being stood down for a month because of poor decision making in a major televised game? Of course not. The implication for the match officials is that one shouldn't stand in the way of the betting market corruptions on the games which they referee. It is worth remembering that the ONLY time a referee was suspended last season was Dermot Gallagher. The media spin was that Gallagher was banned (in his final season as a professional ref) for two-and-a-half months for failing to send off Thatcher for his assault on Mendes - this relates not to the war in Las Islas Malvinas but to the football match between Man City and Portsmouth. Not so. Gallagher also failed to give Portsmouth a penalty in the match and the decision was actually related to a huge global gamble with the fingerprints of a football manager who looks like a standard criminal all over it.
Sky kept us entertained in other ways too at the weekend - although not in the manner that they intended. Their inability to notice that the media rumpus in Spain would pull the plug on their opening La Liga game featuring the Madrid derby was laughable. Up to the hour prior to the alleged kick off, Sky were marketing their four Spanish live games before being forced to hurriedly backtrack. Almost as funny as Rob Palmer's repeated claims to actually be in whichever Spanish city the game is from when he is actually in a London studio.
In a moment of excessive boredom over my breakfast on Sunday, I decided to watch Sky's Sunday Supplement which is when four newspaper hacks sit around a table giving out rampant disinformation. The feature on why referees are incapable of errors and why we should totally trust that the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) is above any type of corruption or criminality was well entertaining. In fact, if you inversed everything that was said by the four sour-faced alcoholics during the programme, you would not have been too far from the absolute truth!
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
The key aspect to Sky's heavily biased and manipulative televised output is their over confidence in the security of their control of the events under their warped jurisdiction. One might think that some effort might be made to disguise the corruption but Sky seem to glorify in it.
For example, lets look at the Sky choice of summarisers for the Man United v Tottenham match - Jamie ("I really believe this") Redknapp and Graeme Souness. Thinking back to the Quest bungs inquiry and the City of London Police raids on Portsmouth, Newcastle and Glasgow Rangers (particularly relating to the scam of a transfer of Boumsong to the Geordies from Ibrox overseen by Souness), are these the types of individual that Sky should have the arrogance to place on our screens to provide the pre-match and half-time disinformation? As we have posted previously, four of the seven points and concerns raised by Lord Stevens related to Harry Redknapp and/or Portsmouth - there was even that peculiarly specific point linking Redknapp to Glasgow based bookmaker, horserace trainer and football agent, Willie McKay. Sky totally taps into this semi-masonic structure featuring corrupt individuals from Glasgow and East London and, if they were able to step back and view how their media operation might be observed by outsiders, they would see that these inappropriate choices of talking head might just be noticed by the ever alert footballing public.
Of course, Sky don't give a damn and why should they when they exhibit a psychopathic control over the English game. Sky's focus on pundits from a few key geographical and business areas is highly revealing. If you can be bothered, check how many of Sky's "expert" summarisers are Londoners, Liverpudlians or Glaswegian - Reid, Redknapp, Walsh, Merson, McInally, Cottee, Thompson, Souness, Gale, Nicholas, Gray, Lampard etc etc etc. Furthermore, the same clubs keep resurfacing in the spectrum of Sky's output - West Ham United, Glasgow Rangers, Portsmouth, for example and we could, if we so wished, tell you which casino in London you would be most likely to find these operators relaxing during their leisure time.
Now, if it was merely the case that Sky people were giving jobs to their mates then one could, perhaps, accept it as a standard example of the lack of meritocracy that exists throughout the English media. Unfortunately, the template is far more manipulative than that.
Rob Styles made two errors in the Liverpool v Chelsea match. These errors worked against the proprietary trading positions taken on the global betting markets by Skybet and their associated market manipulators. Andy Gray's apoplexy was worthy of note. Howard Webb yesterday avoided giving Tottenham either of two potential penalties. The point isn't particularly whether these decisions were correct (in our estimation, one was and one wasn't) but that the Sky post-match summary featured a gloating Andy Gray who totally focused on just one of these decisions (the handball that wasn't) and the entirely pointless argument of whether Carlos Tevez deflected the ball for United's goal. Now, we are sure that you will be interested in the background to this nonsense.
Sky took huge trading positions on a United victory yesterday targeting some of the major European and Asian bookmakers as they sought to make up for their losses of the previous week. Indeed, the markets were so volatile that William Hill suspended betting in-running from the twenty minute mark until half-time. Souness and Redknapp offered verbal manipulations to persuade the leisure punter to put their hard-earned cash in loss-inducing markets and Sky were left with that warm glow that always results from a successful betting scam. It is an interesting aside that when peculiar betting patterns are related to an insider's corruption, there is no public inquiry. If you or I are lucky enough to benefit from a similar piece of market manipulation then alarm bills ring and there is a chance that winnings will not be paid out. Sky raised the media profile of this match from the moment they realised that they had ultimate control in the event - Martin Jol and the managerial crisis, the focus on Robinson's goalkeeping faux pas, Gabriel Heinze and the Premier League and Berbatov's supposed move to Manchester United all ratcheted up the betting turnover.
Will Webb be vilified throughout the media before being stood down for a month because of poor decision making in a major televised game? Of course not. The implication for the match officials is that one shouldn't stand in the way of the betting market corruptions on the games which they referee. It is worth remembering that the ONLY time a referee was suspended last season was Dermot Gallagher. The media spin was that Gallagher was banned (in his final season as a professional ref) for two-and-a-half months for failing to send off Thatcher for his assault on Mendes - this relates not to the war in Las Islas Malvinas but to the football match between Man City and Portsmouth. Not so. Gallagher also failed to give Portsmouth a penalty in the match and the decision was actually related to a huge global gamble with the fingerprints of a football manager who looks like a standard criminal all over it.
Sky kept us entertained in other ways too at the weekend - although not in the manner that they intended. Their inability to notice that the media rumpus in Spain would pull the plug on their opening La Liga game featuring the Madrid derby was laughable. Up to the hour prior to the alleged kick off, Sky were marketing their four Spanish live games before being forced to hurriedly backtrack. Almost as funny as Rob Palmer's repeated claims to actually be in whichever Spanish city the game is from when he is actually in a London studio.
In a moment of excessive boredom over my breakfast on Sunday, I decided to watch Sky's Sunday Supplement which is when four newspaper hacks sit around a table giving out rampant disinformation. The feature on why referees are incapable of errors and why we should totally trust that the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) is above any type of corruption or criminality was well entertaining. In fact, if you inversed everything that was said by the four sour-faced alcoholics during the programme, you would not have been too far from the absolute truth!
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Thursday, 23 August 2007
Reality - Martin Jol Is Compromised By Mansion88
From time to time, the English mainstream media throw excessive hissy fits about entirely fabricated footballing realities. These spectacular society nonsenses, although pithy in the big scheme of things, always have a purpose and that purpose usually relates to some insider(s) increasing the positive nature of their cashflow(s).
A prime example of this waste of column inches is the focus on Martin Jol and Tottenham.
We posted previously that there was rampant disinformation around the managerial situation at Spurs (see: http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2007/08/bastards-in-black.html) and the "news" story has got entirely out of hand in the last few days.
Lets get some things as straight as is feasible.
* Martin Jol was not summoned by Spurs supremo Daniel Levy last week to explain the team's poor start to the season.
* There were no major bets last Friday on Martin Jol being the first manager in the Premiership to get the sack this season. Indeed, the markets do not even make Jol the favourite to win the race for Jobseekers Allowance - that privilege goes to Sammy Lee at Bolton.
* Juande Ramos (the Sevilla manager) did meet with the Tottenham club secretary John Alexander and vice-chairman Paul Kemsley at the Alfonso XIII hotel in Seville last Friday. But this meeting was prior to the alleged major bets on the sacking and, at the meeting, Ramos firmly stated that he intended to honour his contract at the Andalucian club. Tottenham now claim that this meeting never took place.
* Ramos also initially denied that the encounter existed but the Spanish sports media are not so compliant and controlled as the English propaganda machine and he was forced to come clean about the "dizzying" offer that he received from the north Londoners. Entertainingly, Sky's Spanish reporter, Sid Lowe, managed to get virtually every aspect of the spin incorrect in his reports on Sky and in The Guardian.
* It has been made clear to Martin Jol (at a meeting this week) that a top four place or, at the very least, finishing above rivals Arsenal are the targets that need to be achieved for the Dutchman to remain in charge.
The amount of media attention to this partially real occurrence is out of all proportion to its significance. There are clear parallels with the non-story at the end of last season when it was rumoured that there had been major bets on Southampton getting promoted because Microsoft founder Paul Allen was taking over the club (see: http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2007/04/hrh-queen-elizabeth-ii-to-invest-in.html). That particular spectacular was merely a betting scam perpetrated by a certain south coast manager with an inappropriate interest in the markets.
The current Tottenham/Martin Jol wheeze has been dependent on three informational loci. Firstly, Sky Television has driven the story to the forefront of our attentions with an incessant stream of rumour and counter-rumour that has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Sky's big live game next Sunday features Manchester United and Tottenham. Betting turnover is being magnified by all the media focus and Skybet benefit accordingly. Secondly, the mainstream media in England have run the story to the exclusion of other more pertinent concerns within the game. Compare the number of column inches related to Martin Jol with the complete disappearance of the proper reality relating to the City of London police raids on Portsmouth, Glasgow Rangers and Newcastle, for example, which lasted less than 24 hours in the media spotlight. Thirdly, there are a group of betting market operators who are very close to this story. The main impact on the market for the first Premiership managerial casualty has been the lengthening of the prices of other managers being the first to be sacked. In the current Coral market, for example, Martin Jol is 2/1 (3.00) for the boot. If his sacking was a certainty, he would very short odds-on whereas, in reality, he should be long odds against. Sammy Lee and Gareth Southgate should both be significantly shorter than the 15/8 and 8/1 on offer and represent value accordingly.
The running of this excuse of a story has had the impact of severely undermining Jol's position and the team morale. The degree of uncertainty in the shifting sands of White Hart Lane is hardly conducive to a focused and motivated organisation. By allowing the media to play with their realities, Spurs have allowed themselves to be severely compromised. And yet, this is not the big story at Tottenham this season.
In July, Tottenham Hotspur made the highly dubious decision to allow Mansion bookmakers to become their shirt sponsors pocketing a cool £34 million ($70 million) in the process. Manchester United had already refused to accept a sponsorship deal with the Gibraltar-based company instead accepting a lesser offer from insurance giants AIG due to issues related to guilt by association through relations with a major gaming company. The steady procession of Premiership clubs that allow bookmakers and online casinos totally invalid links with their teams continues apace. These bookies inevitably gain access to privileged inside information and, more disturbingly, are, in some instances, able to impact upon match outcome through ownership of or coercion of individuals within the club. As market analysts, there has to be a major concern about the input of the likes of Bet24 at Blackburn or Boylesports at Sunderland to name but two examples but these concerns pale into insignificance when compared with the impact of Mansion at Tottenham.
Mansion did not pay £34 million just to have their logo plastered on every spare inch of space within the Tottenham ground. They paid for market influence. Mansion are a very interesting operation. Founded by Putera Sampoerna, Mansion utilised the massive profits generated by his family's business interests in tobacco and ginseng to enter the betting markets. While it should come as no surprise that yet another Premiership club has been financially benefiting from the profits of addiction, billionaire Sampoerna had a much bigger picture strategy in place. Mansion were the first Asian betting firm to gain a foothold in the European market. The highly liquid Asian markets are responsible for VIRTUALLY ALL the global betting turnover on European football matches but, until Mansions manoeuvre, the Europeans and Asians had maintained a mutually exclusive strategy territorially. Through gaining a slice of the European action, Mansion was able to significantly increase its informational horizons. This knowledge has been utilised to establish a far more powerful betting operation - Mansion88. Set up in the Philippines, Mansion88 is now one of the key global betting firms pricing up the global markets ahead of the competition. Why is it so key to be the fundamental market price source? Because, if you do not maintain a highly abusive form of control of the betting markets, pricing the markets ahead of the remainder of the sector may produce entirely inappropriate and financially damaging exposures on matches where the outcome is in the control of another bookmaker. An interesting side effect of Mansion88 and some other key Asian betting operations in Thailand, Hong Kong and Singapore wrenching control from the European firms has been the peripheralisation of some of the major European companies. Ladbrokes, for example, priced up this next weekend's Premiership matches fully 5 days after the Asian markets had opened while, as we posted earlier in the week, some of the secondary level European firms (like Premierbet) have become insolvent or are teetering on the edge of insolvency. Even allegedly moralistic Betfair are feeling the pinch. The London based betting exchange should really have no excuse for an excessive increase in their commission on trades as they are merely matching betting positions from their clients. Of course, this is not actually the case and Betfair's traders are actively involved in their proprietary markets matching positions where they believe they possess an informational advantage. This worked fine when Betfair believed themselves to be at the cutting edge of the markets but works considerably less well when the informational advantage rests with the Asians. Hence, Betfair secrete away (on some minor webpage that nobody ever looks at) the news that they are increasing commission on asian handicap positions from 1% to 5%! Betfair's marketing justification for this outrageous hike in commission is that the 1% rate was a "promotional offer" despite the fact that this "offer" had existed since the company's founding in 1999...
Mansion88 have been major operators in the global betting markets this season both via the action of primary pricing but also by actively trading the markets in real time. Tottenham's opening match of the season at Sunderland witnessed one of the largest gambles on record and there was also very significant late money on Spurs beating Derby last weekend. The news flow related to Martin Jol's impending departure produced real value in backing Spurs and the major positions were landed within fifteen minutes of the game starting as Spurs raced into a 3-0 lead.
In this manner, spectacular society creates realities that are entirely fallacious and promotes such realities to the exclusion of all other news and/or information while, under the surface and away from prying eyes, the major global bookmakers continue to corrupt the game to oblivion.
Now, why don't we ever hear about that on Sky Television nor, indeed, in any other mainstream media?
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
A prime example of this waste of column inches is the focus on Martin Jol and Tottenham.
We posted previously that there was rampant disinformation around the managerial situation at Spurs (see: http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2007/08/bastards-in-black.html) and the "news" story has got entirely out of hand in the last few days.
Lets get some things as straight as is feasible.
* Martin Jol was not summoned by Spurs supremo Daniel Levy last week to explain the team's poor start to the season.
* There were no major bets last Friday on Martin Jol being the first manager in the Premiership to get the sack this season. Indeed, the markets do not even make Jol the favourite to win the race for Jobseekers Allowance - that privilege goes to Sammy Lee at Bolton.
* Juande Ramos (the Sevilla manager) did meet with the Tottenham club secretary John Alexander and vice-chairman Paul Kemsley at the Alfonso XIII hotel in Seville last Friday. But this meeting was prior to the alleged major bets on the sacking and, at the meeting, Ramos firmly stated that he intended to honour his contract at the Andalucian club. Tottenham now claim that this meeting never took place.
* Ramos also initially denied that the encounter existed but the Spanish sports media are not so compliant and controlled as the English propaganda machine and he was forced to come clean about the "dizzying" offer that he received from the north Londoners. Entertainingly, Sky's Spanish reporter, Sid Lowe, managed to get virtually every aspect of the spin incorrect in his reports on Sky and in The Guardian.
* It has been made clear to Martin Jol (at a meeting this week) that a top four place or, at the very least, finishing above rivals Arsenal are the targets that need to be achieved for the Dutchman to remain in charge.
The amount of media attention to this partially real occurrence is out of all proportion to its significance. There are clear parallels with the non-story at the end of last season when it was rumoured that there had been major bets on Southampton getting promoted because Microsoft founder Paul Allen was taking over the club (see: http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2007/04/hrh-queen-elizabeth-ii-to-invest-in.html). That particular spectacular was merely a betting scam perpetrated by a certain south coast manager with an inappropriate interest in the markets.
The current Tottenham/Martin Jol wheeze has been dependent on three informational loci. Firstly, Sky Television has driven the story to the forefront of our attentions with an incessant stream of rumour and counter-rumour that has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Sky's big live game next Sunday features Manchester United and Tottenham. Betting turnover is being magnified by all the media focus and Skybet benefit accordingly. Secondly, the mainstream media in England have run the story to the exclusion of other more pertinent concerns within the game. Compare the number of column inches related to Martin Jol with the complete disappearance of the proper reality relating to the City of London police raids on Portsmouth, Glasgow Rangers and Newcastle, for example, which lasted less than 24 hours in the media spotlight. Thirdly, there are a group of betting market operators who are very close to this story. The main impact on the market for the first Premiership managerial casualty has been the lengthening of the prices of other managers being the first to be sacked. In the current Coral market, for example, Martin Jol is 2/1 (3.00) for the boot. If his sacking was a certainty, he would very short odds-on whereas, in reality, he should be long odds against. Sammy Lee and Gareth Southgate should both be significantly shorter than the 15/8 and 8/1 on offer and represent value accordingly.
The running of this excuse of a story has had the impact of severely undermining Jol's position and the team morale. The degree of uncertainty in the shifting sands of White Hart Lane is hardly conducive to a focused and motivated organisation. By allowing the media to play with their realities, Spurs have allowed themselves to be severely compromised. And yet, this is not the big story at Tottenham this season.
In July, Tottenham Hotspur made the highly dubious decision to allow Mansion bookmakers to become their shirt sponsors pocketing a cool £34 million ($70 million) in the process. Manchester United had already refused to accept a sponsorship deal with the Gibraltar-based company instead accepting a lesser offer from insurance giants AIG due to issues related to guilt by association through relations with a major gaming company. The steady procession of Premiership clubs that allow bookmakers and online casinos totally invalid links with their teams continues apace. These bookies inevitably gain access to privileged inside information and, more disturbingly, are, in some instances, able to impact upon match outcome through ownership of or coercion of individuals within the club. As market analysts, there has to be a major concern about the input of the likes of Bet24 at Blackburn or Boylesports at Sunderland to name but two examples but these concerns pale into insignificance when compared with the impact of Mansion at Tottenham.
Mansion did not pay £34 million just to have their logo plastered on every spare inch of space within the Tottenham ground. They paid for market influence. Mansion are a very interesting operation. Founded by Putera Sampoerna, Mansion utilised the massive profits generated by his family's business interests in tobacco and ginseng to enter the betting markets. While it should come as no surprise that yet another Premiership club has been financially benefiting from the profits of addiction, billionaire Sampoerna had a much bigger picture strategy in place. Mansion were the first Asian betting firm to gain a foothold in the European market. The highly liquid Asian markets are responsible for VIRTUALLY ALL the global betting turnover on European football matches but, until Mansions manoeuvre, the Europeans and Asians had maintained a mutually exclusive strategy territorially. Through gaining a slice of the European action, Mansion was able to significantly increase its informational horizons. This knowledge has been utilised to establish a far more powerful betting operation - Mansion88. Set up in the Philippines, Mansion88 is now one of the key global betting firms pricing up the global markets ahead of the competition. Why is it so key to be the fundamental market price source? Because, if you do not maintain a highly abusive form of control of the betting markets, pricing the markets ahead of the remainder of the sector may produce entirely inappropriate and financially damaging exposures on matches where the outcome is in the control of another bookmaker. An interesting side effect of Mansion88 and some other key Asian betting operations in Thailand, Hong Kong and Singapore wrenching control from the European firms has been the peripheralisation of some of the major European companies. Ladbrokes, for example, priced up this next weekend's Premiership matches fully 5 days after the Asian markets had opened while, as we posted earlier in the week, some of the secondary level European firms (like Premierbet) have become insolvent or are teetering on the edge of insolvency. Even allegedly moralistic Betfair are feeling the pinch. The London based betting exchange should really have no excuse for an excessive increase in their commission on trades as they are merely matching betting positions from their clients. Of course, this is not actually the case and Betfair's traders are actively involved in their proprietary markets matching positions where they believe they possess an informational advantage. This worked fine when Betfair believed themselves to be at the cutting edge of the markets but works considerably less well when the informational advantage rests with the Asians. Hence, Betfair secrete away (on some minor webpage that nobody ever looks at) the news that they are increasing commission on asian handicap positions from 1% to 5%! Betfair's marketing justification for this outrageous hike in commission is that the 1% rate was a "promotional offer" despite the fact that this "offer" had existed since the company's founding in 1999...
Mansion88 have been major operators in the global betting markets this season both via the action of primary pricing but also by actively trading the markets in real time. Tottenham's opening match of the season at Sunderland witnessed one of the largest gambles on record and there was also very significant late money on Spurs beating Derby last weekend. The news flow related to Martin Jol's impending departure produced real value in backing Spurs and the major positions were landed within fifteen minutes of the game starting as Spurs raced into a 3-0 lead.
In this manner, spectacular society creates realities that are entirely fallacious and promotes such realities to the exclusion of all other news and/or information while, under the surface and away from prying eyes, the major global bookmakers continue to corrupt the game to oblivion.
Now, why don't we ever hear about that on Sky Television nor, indeed, in any other mainstream media?
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Thursday, 9 August 2007
Psychopath Versus Psychopath - Round Two
The media focuses our attentions on the battles in the season ahead. Will Tottenham break into the top four ahead of their north London rivals? Will Manchester City or, for that matter, Liverpool make up any ground on Manchester United? Chelsea or United for the Premiership? What about Celtic versus Rangers or Barcelona and Real Madrid or Milan, Inter and Juve?
On a more individual level, the Gerrard versus Lampard saga will, no doubt, meander onwards as will the media's creation of David James or Paul Robinson for the England goalkeeping slot. In the corruption stakes, will Michael Owen formally join the Goldchip private betting company run by his business partner Steve Smith?
Without coming across as a bunch of suits, we are most eagerly awaiting an entirely different type of encounter - Virgin versus Sky. Undoubtedly, the degree of competitiveness in this particular financial match will be of a far greater magnitude than any of the soporific pieces of theatre dressed up as competitive sporting events that the Premiership will offer.
This big battle has all the key ingredients of a classic. There is a certain amount of history between the two "teams", underhand manipulative tactics are being used on a destabilisation level in the pre-season window, moles have been placed in the other sides ranks, aggressive media and public relations posturing forms part of the marketing agenda and both executives are psychopathic in their desire to win and to gain non-competitive monopolistic power through absolute control.
Ferguson against Mourinho? Forget it. Branson versus Murdoch is the only game in town.
As part of the pre-match build up, lets look at the history, the formations and the possible outcomes in the war ahead.
As soon as Sky became aware that Virgin were working with Setanta to create a competitive market for the screening of Premiership football matches, the Murdoch machine geared up. With dubious legality, Sky unilaterally pulled its main channels from the Virgin Media platform in February by insisting on a one hundred per cent payment rate increase that no company could possibly be expected to accept. The conflict was deliberately manufactured by Sky in order to suppress competition and coerce Virgin Media's customers into switching to its service by denying them access to the basic channels.
But, before we move anywhere near any suggestion that we might be in a goodie v baddie scenario here, we'll balance the history with an example of Branson's own manipulative machinations. Usually, whistleblowing is undertaken by employees who become disenchanted with the corruption in their workplace eg Enron or Victor Chandler International (by the way, who is the Premiership manager who placed £12 million of bets in one season?). The Virgin/British Airways cartel was a very different form of whistleblowing structure altogether. The two airlines cooperated to illegally and repeatedly increase fuel surcharges on their passengers over a considerable period. In an attempt to obtain competitive advantage, Virgin themselves whistleblew their own corruption partners in a striking piece of real capitalism. The result was a huge fine for BA and big grin on Branson's smug face. Don't be fooled by the sweaters knitted by his grandmother, Branson is a primary level sociopath.
Both parties have been busy in the pre-season period with highly targeted advertising and media releases mixed together with further territory grabs and destabilisation strategies. Sky informed its freelance cameramen and technical operators that, if they were to work for Virgin/Setanta, their contracts with Sky would be terminated. There are also rumours that the withdrawal of TWI from participation in the Virgin/Setanta news channel was orchestrated by Murdoch's boys (the proposed launch date for this channel has now receded to mid season from September).
The advertising strategies have been interesting also with Sky, once again, showing their expertise in creative lying while Setanta's billboard campaign is rather more pitiful in comparison. Sky content promotions on Sky channels shout to us that we are receiving more games than ever (which isn't true) before progressing with the claim that, at long last, there will be no more Pay-Per-View games on the channel - like this forms some obtuse form of customer advantage. A more truthful marketing exercise would state that Sky is providing less games because another channel is now offering one-third of the televised content but that doesn't sound so good. As for Setanta, by their marketing utilisation of "Man-U" (the dismissive and somewhat abusive shortening of United's name), they have immediately ostracised the largest fanbase in the country.
Setanta does, though, have some competitive advantages. Their selection of games to show is non-meritocratic resulting in neither Bolton nor Wigan appearing in any of Setanta's opening nineteen live matches (Manchester United, Aston Villa, Newcastle, Sunderland, Liverpool and Blackburn each have three or four events covered in this window). This choice of teams is highly tilted towards Setanta's Irish customer base. Additionally, Des Lynam trumps snidey and repugnant Richard Keys any day of the week while there is parity in the co-hosting area with former players Steve McManaman and Jamie Redknapp being no strangers to the global betting arenas.
Corporate shareholder capitalism claims to be to customer orientated. It isn't. As the two mammoth companies battle for monopolistic control, every possible tactic will be used to gain competitive advantage. The coincidence of games hardly favours the armchair fan and, yet, Sky has placed Championship and lower league games at identical kick off times to Setanta's Premiership offerings. This practice, by slicing the audience, also slices the available advertising revenue but a Liverpool fan will hardly be delighted that their team's opening match of the season (on Setanta) occurs in parallel to Liverpudlian Steve Morgan's first game in charge of Wolves (on Sky). Obviously, a Scouser will choose the former but, if offered both games, they would watch both. Although it is no concern of ours, even the mighty bookmakers lose out by this strategy of coincidence.
So, what is a football fan to do? This is a trickier question than it might first appear. One can buy the services separately or one can financially analyse the cumulative packages and see which offers the best value for money taking into account the Spanish football on Sky and the Scottish and Irish on Setanta. Unfortunately, such a process may be merely an exercise in futility. As Mark Twain is alleged to have said "it is very difficult to make predictions, particularly about the future" but any assessment of the media providers for the season ahead must take into account the possibility that Sky will psychopathically pull their proprietary events from the other channels to the detriment of Virgin and BT. After all Sky have historical form in this area and all Sky's strategies are designed to scrape along the bottom of any barrel of business ethics that they deem necessary in order to enhance the development of Sky's global media oligarchy.
Our suggestion would be to avoid all of the media options and to explore more creative ways to access the Premiership games. Yesterday it was announced that the SINA Corporation in China has purchased rights to every single Premiership and Serie A game live for the next free seasons via Pay TV or the internet. Now where's that database of P2P streaming sites?
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
On a more individual level, the Gerrard versus Lampard saga will, no doubt, meander onwards as will the media's creation of David James or Paul Robinson for the England goalkeeping slot. In the corruption stakes, will Michael Owen formally join the Goldchip private betting company run by his business partner Steve Smith?
Without coming across as a bunch of suits, we are most eagerly awaiting an entirely different type of encounter - Virgin versus Sky. Undoubtedly, the degree of competitiveness in this particular financial match will be of a far greater magnitude than any of the soporific pieces of theatre dressed up as competitive sporting events that the Premiership will offer.
This big battle has all the key ingredients of a classic. There is a certain amount of history between the two "teams", underhand manipulative tactics are being used on a destabilisation level in the pre-season window, moles have been placed in the other sides ranks, aggressive media and public relations posturing forms part of the marketing agenda and both executives are psychopathic in their desire to win and to gain non-competitive monopolistic power through absolute control.
Ferguson against Mourinho? Forget it. Branson versus Murdoch is the only game in town.
As part of the pre-match build up, lets look at the history, the formations and the possible outcomes in the war ahead.
As soon as Sky became aware that Virgin were working with Setanta to create a competitive market for the screening of Premiership football matches, the Murdoch machine geared up. With dubious legality, Sky unilaterally pulled its main channels from the Virgin Media platform in February by insisting on a one hundred per cent payment rate increase that no company could possibly be expected to accept. The conflict was deliberately manufactured by Sky in order to suppress competition and coerce Virgin Media's customers into switching to its service by denying them access to the basic channels.
But, before we move anywhere near any suggestion that we might be in a goodie v baddie scenario here, we'll balance the history with an example of Branson's own manipulative machinations. Usually, whistleblowing is undertaken by employees who become disenchanted with the corruption in their workplace eg Enron or Victor Chandler International (by the way, who is the Premiership manager who placed £12 million of bets in one season?). The Virgin/British Airways cartel was a very different form of whistleblowing structure altogether. The two airlines cooperated to illegally and repeatedly increase fuel surcharges on their passengers over a considerable period. In an attempt to obtain competitive advantage, Virgin themselves whistleblew their own corruption partners in a striking piece of real capitalism. The result was a huge fine for BA and big grin on Branson's smug face. Don't be fooled by the sweaters knitted by his grandmother, Branson is a primary level sociopath.
Both parties have been busy in the pre-season period with highly targeted advertising and media releases mixed together with further territory grabs and destabilisation strategies. Sky informed its freelance cameramen and technical operators that, if they were to work for Virgin/Setanta, their contracts with Sky would be terminated. There are also rumours that the withdrawal of TWI from participation in the Virgin/Setanta news channel was orchestrated by Murdoch's boys (the proposed launch date for this channel has now receded to mid season from September).
The advertising strategies have been interesting also with Sky, once again, showing their expertise in creative lying while Setanta's billboard campaign is rather more pitiful in comparison. Sky content promotions on Sky channels shout to us that we are receiving more games than ever (which isn't true) before progressing with the claim that, at long last, there will be no more Pay-Per-View games on the channel - like this forms some obtuse form of customer advantage. A more truthful marketing exercise would state that Sky is providing less games because another channel is now offering one-third of the televised content but that doesn't sound so good. As for Setanta, by their marketing utilisation of "Man-U" (the dismissive and somewhat abusive shortening of United's name), they have immediately ostracised the largest fanbase in the country.
Setanta does, though, have some competitive advantages. Their selection of games to show is non-meritocratic resulting in neither Bolton nor Wigan appearing in any of Setanta's opening nineteen live matches (Manchester United, Aston Villa, Newcastle, Sunderland, Liverpool and Blackburn each have three or four events covered in this window). This choice of teams is highly tilted towards Setanta's Irish customer base. Additionally, Des Lynam trumps snidey and repugnant Richard Keys any day of the week while there is parity in the co-hosting area with former players Steve McManaman and Jamie Redknapp being no strangers to the global betting arenas.
Corporate shareholder capitalism claims to be to customer orientated. It isn't. As the two mammoth companies battle for monopolistic control, every possible tactic will be used to gain competitive advantage. The coincidence of games hardly favours the armchair fan and, yet, Sky has placed Championship and lower league games at identical kick off times to Setanta's Premiership offerings. This practice, by slicing the audience, also slices the available advertising revenue but a Liverpool fan will hardly be delighted that their team's opening match of the season (on Setanta) occurs in parallel to Liverpudlian Steve Morgan's first game in charge of Wolves (on Sky). Obviously, a Scouser will choose the former but, if offered both games, they would watch both. Although it is no concern of ours, even the mighty bookmakers lose out by this strategy of coincidence.
So, what is a football fan to do? This is a trickier question than it might first appear. One can buy the services separately or one can financially analyse the cumulative packages and see which offers the best value for money taking into account the Spanish football on Sky and the Scottish and Irish on Setanta. Unfortunately, such a process may be merely an exercise in futility. As Mark Twain is alleged to have said "it is very difficult to make predictions, particularly about the future" but any assessment of the media providers for the season ahead must take into account the possibility that Sky will psychopathically pull their proprietary events from the other channels to the detriment of Virgin and BT. After all Sky have historical form in this area and all Sky's strategies are designed to scrape along the bottom of any barrel of business ethics that they deem necessary in order to enhance the development of Sky's global media oligarchy.
Our suggestion would be to avoid all of the media options and to explore more creative ways to access the Premiership games. Yesterday it was announced that the SINA Corporation in China has purchased rights to every single Premiership and Serie A game live for the next free seasons via Pay TV or the internet. Now where's that database of P2P streaming sites?
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Tuesday, 31 July 2007
Richard Scudamore For Jobseekers Allowance
Richard Scudamore continues backtracking, covering over his and the Premier League's trails, in an increasingly desperate attempt to emerge from the various scandals that slosh around his/their ankles with a modicom of professionalism still in place.
Having only supported the publication of the Quest inquiry after the arrest of the still unknown 61 year old in May for money laundering, Scudamore has lost more control of the whole bungs process with the City of London police raids on Glasgow Rangers, Newcastle United and Portsmouth. He cannot be awaiting any future developments with anything other than trepidation.
Furthermore, Scudamore is more than compromised by the West Ham United/MSI/Carlos Tevez saga. The double-jointed posturing of the Premier League has not only created a situation of pure farce in East London but has also established a confrontational negotiation battle when a more conciliatory structure could easily have been implemented. Having allowed West Ham United to remain in the Premiership without the points deduction that everybody on the planet appears to feel was a just punishment (Scudamore and West Ham excepted), the Premier League could only justify its position by declaring the third party agreements null and void. The short-termism of this strategy was swiftly realised when Tevez wished to move on to Man Utd. Did Scudamore just assume that his and the Premier League's repeated departures from the truth would disappear from the public's perception? The only route out of appearing ridiculously foolish is now a hidden agreement reached out of court between the various parties in this absolutely-not-three-party arrangement. Merely undertaking their role in these third party discussions totally undermines the self-policing of the Premier League and the original justification for allowing the Hammers to retain their Premiership place. And this is Scudamore's best option...
Rather than hob-nobbing with the gambling good in Hong Kong, Richard Scudamore would have been better employed at his desk addressing both the West Ham situation and the increasingly awkward Thaksin Shinawatra soap. We have itemised over numerous recent posts the reasonings why Thaksin is not a fit and proper person to own a Premiership football club (even if this club is Manchester City). The Premier League have repeatedly offered no obstacles to the conveyor belt of disturbing takeovers that have littered the English game over the last three years.
Today, Scudamore attempted to justify the allowance of Thaksin's takeover following concerns raised by both Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International (AI). HRW wrote to the Premier League claiming that Shinawatra is "a human rights abuser of the worst kind" and that he should not have passed the league's 'fit and proper person' test. AI added that "if the Premier League wants to take any of that [human rights violations] into account when making their decisions, we're happy to make our documents available to them". As the HRW allegations and evidence of murder/torture are to be aired on BBC Five Live this evening, the Premier League was forced into a response. This response makes interesting reading: "It is important to realise that the Premier League takes its responsibilities surrounding the governance of its clubs very seriously. We have very clear rules on the ownership of our clubs, which include the Fit and Proper Persons Test (FAPPT), which go beyond any requirement by UK company law and are, to our knowledge, some of the sternest in place in any UK industry. The FAPPT means anyone convicted of a range of offences would not be permitted to become a director, or a shadow director, at a club".
A few points arising from this reply. Firstly, the point about shadow director is clearly being overlooked with respect to the position at Portsmouth where Alexandre Gaydamak controls the club as a shadow for his father, Arcadi, who is prevented from travelling to Europe due to a French arrest warrant for illegal arms dealing. By initialising the pretence that Alexandre is in control, the Premier League attempts to avoid the charges of either FAPPT or shadow issues being compromised. Secondly, the requirements in other industry sectors are of no significance. Premiership football is in a unique position which requires very specific legal and regulatory structures if the sport is to avoid, even at this late stage, the inexorable slide towards being merely a gambling sport. The fact that the Premiership is already directly linked with the illegal and liquid Far East betting markets enforces a very particular role for the guardians of the game.
The Premier League is repeatedly failing to look after the interests of anyone but the people with fat wallets. As Chief Executive of the Premier League, Richard Scudamore must take responsibility when the game is repeatedly falling into disrepute. And all this is before the inevitable betting scandal that must break the surface at some point soon...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Having only supported the publication of the Quest inquiry after the arrest of the still unknown 61 year old in May for money laundering, Scudamore has lost more control of the whole bungs process with the City of London police raids on Glasgow Rangers, Newcastle United and Portsmouth. He cannot be awaiting any future developments with anything other than trepidation.
Furthermore, Scudamore is more than compromised by the West Ham United/MSI/Carlos Tevez saga. The double-jointed posturing of the Premier League has not only created a situation of pure farce in East London but has also established a confrontational negotiation battle when a more conciliatory structure could easily have been implemented. Having allowed West Ham United to remain in the Premiership without the points deduction that everybody on the planet appears to feel was a just punishment (Scudamore and West Ham excepted), the Premier League could only justify its position by declaring the third party agreements null and void. The short-termism of this strategy was swiftly realised when Tevez wished to move on to Man Utd. Did Scudamore just assume that his and the Premier League's repeated departures from the truth would disappear from the public's perception? The only route out of appearing ridiculously foolish is now a hidden agreement reached out of court between the various parties in this absolutely-not-three-party arrangement. Merely undertaking their role in these third party discussions totally undermines the self-policing of the Premier League and the original justification for allowing the Hammers to retain their Premiership place. And this is Scudamore's best option...
Rather than hob-nobbing with the gambling good in Hong Kong, Richard Scudamore would have been better employed at his desk addressing both the West Ham situation and the increasingly awkward Thaksin Shinawatra soap. We have itemised over numerous recent posts the reasonings why Thaksin is not a fit and proper person to own a Premiership football club (even if this club is Manchester City). The Premier League have repeatedly offered no obstacles to the conveyor belt of disturbing takeovers that have littered the English game over the last three years.
Today, Scudamore attempted to justify the allowance of Thaksin's takeover following concerns raised by both Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International (AI). HRW wrote to the Premier League claiming that Shinawatra is "a human rights abuser of the worst kind" and that he should not have passed the league's 'fit and proper person' test. AI added that "if the Premier League wants to take any of that [human rights violations] into account when making their decisions, we're happy to make our documents available to them". As the HRW allegations and evidence of murder/torture are to be aired on BBC Five Live this evening, the Premier League was forced into a response. This response makes interesting reading: "It is important to realise that the Premier League takes its responsibilities surrounding the governance of its clubs very seriously. We have very clear rules on the ownership of our clubs, which include the Fit and Proper Persons Test (FAPPT), which go beyond any requirement by UK company law and are, to our knowledge, some of the sternest in place in any UK industry. The FAPPT means anyone convicted of a range of offences would not be permitted to become a director, or a shadow director, at a club".
A few points arising from this reply. Firstly, the point about shadow director is clearly being overlooked with respect to the position at Portsmouth where Alexandre Gaydamak controls the club as a shadow for his father, Arcadi, who is prevented from travelling to Europe due to a French arrest warrant for illegal arms dealing. By initialising the pretence that Alexandre is in control, the Premier League attempts to avoid the charges of either FAPPT or shadow issues being compromised. Secondly, the requirements in other industry sectors are of no significance. Premiership football is in a unique position which requires very specific legal and regulatory structures if the sport is to avoid, even at this late stage, the inexorable slide towards being merely a gambling sport. The fact that the Premiership is already directly linked with the illegal and liquid Far East betting markets enforces a very particular role for the guardians of the game.
The Premier League is repeatedly failing to look after the interests of anyone but the people with fat wallets. As Chief Executive of the Premier League, Richard Scudamore must take responsibility when the game is repeatedly falling into disrepute. And all this is before the inevitable betting scandal that must break the surface at some point soon...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Friday, 20 July 2007
Betting Baron Buys Birmingham
As the takeover of the Premiership by individuals, partnerships or consortia with either previous or strategic betting market plans continues apace, today we take a look at "mysterious" Carson Yeung who this week increased his stake in Birmingham City to just under 30%.
Okay lets look at a few of the known facts about Hong Kong-based businessman Yeung.
Firstly, he allegedly made his money trading penny stocks which is simply not a feasible route to billionaire status.
Secondly, until he bought a 16.67% stake in Grandtop International Holdings, he was never on the records of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Indeed, Mr Invisible only really burst on to the scene in 2004 when he co-founded Greek Mythology, a Macau based casino that was known at the time to have close links to the underground and illegal Far East betting markets.
Thirdly, Yeung has some interesting associates. It came as no surprise that Stevie McManaman (who has, incidentally, never been anywhere near the global betting markets at any point in his long and "illustrious" career) was approached for being in charge of the day to day matters as Yeung launches his bid to take the club private and away from regulator's eyes.
Fourthly, how does a hairdresser create assets of over a billion pounds? Are perms particularly expensive in Hong Kong?
Fifthly, Steve Bruce is urgently seeking a meeting with Yeung and the absence of his inclusion in the takeover process to date would suggest that his days at Brum are numbered.
Sixthly, this is the tenth takeover in the Premiership that has resulted in club ownership being based on implementing a global betting strategy with respect to the individual clubs games.
Seventhly, Yeung's previous foray into ownership of a footie club was disastrous. He took over Hong Kong Rangers but his control lasted merely three games as he insisted on interfering in team selection matters.
Eighthly, the man has form even when one just chooses to judge his business activities away from the black market. In 2004, Yeung ran into trouble with the Hong Kong authorities and was prosecuted by the local financial regulator for failing to disclose his holdings in a company but was only ordered to pay a small fine.
Ninthly, the other potential bidding protagonist for Birmingham is equally cuddly Lakshmi Mittal who specialises in outrageous hostile takeovers and is even richer than Yeung. This battle may have more mileage in it.
As more and more clubs have gone private to avoid having to disclose financial strategies, profit and loss accounts and taxation issues to the financial markets, the likelihood of offshore activities in the underground Asian markets has inexorably increased. Jingoism has reared its ugly head throughout this process with the most fuss being generated by, firstly, the wave of dodgy Americans and, then, the recent Asian bids. A similar reaction to the takeover of Newcastle by Mike Ashley was remarkable through its absence.
The lack of action by the Premiership and, to a lesser extent, the FA is a complete disgrace. These faceless individuals have the stewardship of our great game in their hands and they insist on selling the game out to the very worst of the market sector participants - global betting market traders and bookmakers from Britain, Gibraltar, Israel, America, Russia and the Far East.
Mainstream media comment? Forget it. History is only written by the victors and contemporary press is only written by the acquiescent and edited by the corrupt.
I'll leave the final word to the billionaire barber: "I don't have any politics and I only want to buy for interest because I love football". If one were to exchange the word "football" for "money", this whole sorry episode would be more logical.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Okay lets look at a few of the known facts about Hong Kong-based businessman Yeung.
Firstly, he allegedly made his money trading penny stocks which is simply not a feasible route to billionaire status.
Secondly, until he bought a 16.67% stake in Grandtop International Holdings, he was never on the records of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Indeed, Mr Invisible only really burst on to the scene in 2004 when he co-founded Greek Mythology, a Macau based casino that was known at the time to have close links to the underground and illegal Far East betting markets.
Thirdly, Yeung has some interesting associates. It came as no surprise that Stevie McManaman (who has, incidentally, never been anywhere near the global betting markets at any point in his long and "illustrious" career) was approached for being in charge of the day to day matters as Yeung launches his bid to take the club private and away from regulator's eyes.
Fourthly, how does a hairdresser create assets of over a billion pounds? Are perms particularly expensive in Hong Kong?
Fifthly, Steve Bruce is urgently seeking a meeting with Yeung and the absence of his inclusion in the takeover process to date would suggest that his days at Brum are numbered.
Sixthly, this is the tenth takeover in the Premiership that has resulted in club ownership being based on implementing a global betting strategy with respect to the individual clubs games.
Seventhly, Yeung's previous foray into ownership of a footie club was disastrous. He took over Hong Kong Rangers but his control lasted merely three games as he insisted on interfering in team selection matters.
Eighthly, the man has form even when one just chooses to judge his business activities away from the black market. In 2004, Yeung ran into trouble with the Hong Kong authorities and was prosecuted by the local financial regulator for failing to disclose his holdings in a company but was only ordered to pay a small fine.
Ninthly, the other potential bidding protagonist for Birmingham is equally cuddly Lakshmi Mittal who specialises in outrageous hostile takeovers and is even richer than Yeung. This battle may have more mileage in it.
As more and more clubs have gone private to avoid having to disclose financial strategies, profit and loss accounts and taxation issues to the financial markets, the likelihood of offshore activities in the underground Asian markets has inexorably increased. Jingoism has reared its ugly head throughout this process with the most fuss being generated by, firstly, the wave of dodgy Americans and, then, the recent Asian bids. A similar reaction to the takeover of Newcastle by Mike Ashley was remarkable through its absence.
The lack of action by the Premiership and, to a lesser extent, the FA is a complete disgrace. These faceless individuals have the stewardship of our great game in their hands and they insist on selling the game out to the very worst of the market sector participants - global betting market traders and bookmakers from Britain, Gibraltar, Israel, America, Russia and the Far East.
Mainstream media comment? Forget it. History is only written by the victors and contemporary press is only written by the acquiescent and edited by the corrupt.
I'll leave the final word to the billionaire barber: "I don't have any politics and I only want to buy for interest because I love football". If one were to exchange the word "football" for "money", this whole sorry episode would be more logical.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Tuesday, 17 July 2007
Enter The Fall Guys
Being in Glasgow on the day that Ibrox is raided by the City of London Police is, as a Celtic fan, a proper grin. The fact that Newcastle, Souness and Portsmouth are also being rightfully and properly investigated only adds to a general air of slightly malicious good humour. Undoubtedly, the raids are scratching the surface of the corruption endemic in the English and, to a lesser extent, the British game. And, yet, the particular clubs and individuals that are in the public eye as a result of these police raids, the Quest Inquiry and the Premier League's targeting of selective individuals are merely selected operators in relation to the core of this corruption.
The transfer of Jean-Alain Boumsong is an indication of the degree to which characters like Souness and Redknapp together with the bigger clubs feel that they are effectively above the law. To have conducted a transfer that was so obviously a stitch-up, Rangers and Souness must have made the assessment that they were untouchable. The player was available for £8.2million having joined Rangers just six months earlier on a free transfer. But even more revealingly, Newcastle were well aware of Boumsong prior to his departure from Auxerre because Bobby Robson (the manager at Newcastle prior to Souness) had travelled to France to watch him. Robson declined the opportunity to sign the centre-half, even on a free transfer, and his doubts about Boumsong's suitability for British football were confirmed when the club's England striker Alan Shearer was marked by Boumsong in a pre-season game against Rangers and came off to speak in dismissive terms about the Frenchman's lack of physicality. How much of this £8.2 million found its way into Souness' bank accounts? One cannot help but recollect the comments of Souness on Sky to the effect that the English game is "the most honest in the world".
Harry Redknapp similarly possesses a sense of belief in his indestructibility. His inappropriate closeness to bookmaking operations, the horseracing industry and Sky Television allows him to feel a protective shield against regulatory and public observations of his financial endeavours. We would suggest anybody with any doubt with regard to Redknapp's modus operandi to do the mathematics related to his business assets in comparison with his stated earnings as a mid-tier average football manager.
Pleasurable though it has been over this summer break to see the likes of Souness, Zahavi, Joorabchian, Redknapp and Poll slither around in cesspools of their own creation, these characters are either disposable or are a distance from the core of the corruption or they are well enough protected by their own security operations to be dismissive of the progressions in their realities.
Entirely conspicuous by their absence from any of these summer upheavals has been the bookmaking industry and the new breed of hyper owners who are targeting the global betting markets as their financial strategy for growth. It is a typical feature of anti-corruption campaigns for the lesser fish to be netted (and, often, let off, think Scoober Libby for example) while the true manipulators continue with their corruption away from the gaze of the regulators. Indeed, the system establishes concentric circles of fall guys that allows the most dangerous operators their anonymity in person and strategy. This structure is replicated across politics, business and the criminal underworld as well as the game of football. The manner in which the bookmaking companies were able to hijack the inquiry into the "death" of Bob Woolmer is a typical ruse.
Still, we should enjoy our small victories while we can. The next season in the Premiership is going to be several orders of magnitude worse than anything that has gone before. And the recent seasons have been bad enough.
It will be intriguing to see how much time Mr Redknapp spends on his mobile with his hand covering his mouth in the early games of the season - there were games last season (Arsenal at the Emirates, for instance) where the phone was permanently in use.
Perhaps the spread firms could start offering markets for Redknapp's mobile phone minutes in running!
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
The transfer of Jean-Alain Boumsong is an indication of the degree to which characters like Souness and Redknapp together with the bigger clubs feel that they are effectively above the law. To have conducted a transfer that was so obviously a stitch-up, Rangers and Souness must have made the assessment that they were untouchable. The player was available for £8.2million having joined Rangers just six months earlier on a free transfer. But even more revealingly, Newcastle were well aware of Boumsong prior to his departure from Auxerre because Bobby Robson (the manager at Newcastle prior to Souness) had travelled to France to watch him. Robson declined the opportunity to sign the centre-half, even on a free transfer, and his doubts about Boumsong's suitability for British football were confirmed when the club's England striker Alan Shearer was marked by Boumsong in a pre-season game against Rangers and came off to speak in dismissive terms about the Frenchman's lack of physicality. How much of this £8.2 million found its way into Souness' bank accounts? One cannot help but recollect the comments of Souness on Sky to the effect that the English game is "the most honest in the world".
Harry Redknapp similarly possesses a sense of belief in his indestructibility. His inappropriate closeness to bookmaking operations, the horseracing industry and Sky Television allows him to feel a protective shield against regulatory and public observations of his financial endeavours. We would suggest anybody with any doubt with regard to Redknapp's modus operandi to do the mathematics related to his business assets in comparison with his stated earnings as a mid-tier average football manager.
Pleasurable though it has been over this summer break to see the likes of Souness, Zahavi, Joorabchian, Redknapp and Poll slither around in cesspools of their own creation, these characters are either disposable or are a distance from the core of the corruption or they are well enough protected by their own security operations to be dismissive of the progressions in their realities.
Entirely conspicuous by their absence from any of these summer upheavals has been the bookmaking industry and the new breed of hyper owners who are targeting the global betting markets as their financial strategy for growth. It is a typical feature of anti-corruption campaigns for the lesser fish to be netted (and, often, let off, think Scoober Libby for example) while the true manipulators continue with their corruption away from the gaze of the regulators. Indeed, the system establishes concentric circles of fall guys that allows the most dangerous operators their anonymity in person and strategy. This structure is replicated across politics, business and the criminal underworld as well as the game of football. The manner in which the bookmaking companies were able to hijack the inquiry into the "death" of Bob Woolmer is a typical ruse.
Still, we should enjoy our small victories while we can. The next season in the Premiership is going to be several orders of magnitude worse than anything that has gone before. And the recent seasons have been bad enough.
It will be intriguing to see how much time Mr Redknapp spends on his mobile with his hand covering his mouth in the early games of the season - there were games last season (Arsenal at the Emirates, for instance) where the phone was permanently in use.
Perhaps the spread firms could start offering markets for Redknapp's mobile phone minutes in running!
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
Tuesday, 17 April 2007
An Analyst's Perspective On The Super League
Our recent post on the development of a European Super League for the continent's most powerful teams assessed the systemic infrastructural changes from a variety of standpoints (see: http://footballisfixed.blogspot.com/2007/04/every-so-often-g1418-group-of-europes.html). The prime conclusions of our original post were that a blueprint and strategy already exist for the creation of a Super League and that there was an inevitability about the development. The only uncertainty from our position is timescale.
In this post, we assess what the changes will mean for professional traders and market analysts.
So, it's August 2010 and the first Kohlberg Kravis Roberts/ Rio Tinto Zinc Super League is about to kick off - we prefer "Europa" but sponsorship money is infinitely more important than any creativeness. The 20 strong 8 nation league represents the G14(18) plus Chelsea and Glasgow Rangers. There is a pool of twelve referees - two each from the Big 4 countries and one each for the lesser nations. The first structure that will become evident to all analysts and traders is that of our old friend the fully matured market. Whether the systemic infrastructure resembles a cartel, a monopoly or a duopoly, the vertically integrated power hierarchy will enforce ultimate and complete control. One of the key developmental aspects for all market observers will be the control of price. When markets develop to their mature phase, the control of price falls into ever fewer and fewer hands. In some markets eg British horseracing, the control is absolute and, for many events, there is no information in the price for the vast majority of market participants. If football market making is an effective duopoly between the Far East and Europe then there is competitive pricing; if either side is in control of the market making process then we are in a far more entertaining marketplace. This control is targeted with respect to two main market sectors - the pre match markets and the in running markets. Obviously, the impact on margin is another factor that matures with the market. Dietrological have our own proprietary modelling of future scenario analyses and we would not wish to discuss isolationist areas. However, the progression from fragmented cartelisation to a more mature format is a prime functional backdrop to all of our trading activities. Black box technology with creative input will yield profitable outputs as will market memory but the information in the price will become an increasingly complex area of analysis for traders who lack experience in operating in fully mature sectors. A major skill for trading the Super League will be how to utilise the fundamental parameters. There will be events when these fundamentals have absolutely no relevance and others where the solution lies within such fundamentals. Indeed, this is already the case within some current market structures.
Our Trading Team have discussed the implications of the Super League recently whenever we have been able to share a location. For highly skilled market analysts, there will be a spectrum of trading and consultative opportunities. The increased liquidity across the sector will inevitably feedback into performance-based rewards. As the market depth increases so will the trading security - no more doubt about collecting your winnings. Equally inevitably, this will lead to dealing with a better class of criminal - Haberdashers' Aske's or Eton as opposed to Strangeways or the East End. The range of available consultancy work will increase. Investment houses, Super League teams, market makers/brokers, media, trading operations, government and regulators will all be buying in professional analytical skills.
The deferred gratification of staying out of the loop as long as possible is an earner for a strategic analyst.
In this post, we assess what the changes will mean for professional traders and market analysts.
So, it's August 2010 and the first Kohlberg Kravis Roberts/ Rio Tinto Zinc Super League is about to kick off - we prefer "Europa" but sponsorship money is infinitely more important than any creativeness. The 20 strong 8 nation league represents the G14(18) plus Chelsea and Glasgow Rangers. There is a pool of twelve referees - two each from the Big 4 countries and one each for the lesser nations. The first structure that will become evident to all analysts and traders is that of our old friend the fully matured market. Whether the systemic infrastructure resembles a cartel, a monopoly or a duopoly, the vertically integrated power hierarchy will enforce ultimate and complete control. One of the key developmental aspects for all market observers will be the control of price. When markets develop to their mature phase, the control of price falls into ever fewer and fewer hands. In some markets eg British horseracing, the control is absolute and, for many events, there is no information in the price for the vast majority of market participants. If football market making is an effective duopoly between the Far East and Europe then there is competitive pricing; if either side is in control of the market making process then we are in a far more entertaining marketplace. This control is targeted with respect to two main market sectors - the pre match markets and the in running markets. Obviously, the impact on margin is another factor that matures with the market. Dietrological have our own proprietary modelling of future scenario analyses and we would not wish to discuss isolationist areas. However, the progression from fragmented cartelisation to a more mature format is a prime functional backdrop to all of our trading activities. Black box technology with creative input will yield profitable outputs as will market memory but the information in the price will become an increasingly complex area of analysis for traders who lack experience in operating in fully mature sectors. A major skill for trading the Super League will be how to utilise the fundamental parameters. There will be events when these fundamentals have absolutely no relevance and others where the solution lies within such fundamentals. Indeed, this is already the case within some current market structures.
Our Trading Team have discussed the implications of the Super League recently whenever we have been able to share a location. For highly skilled market analysts, there will be a spectrum of trading and consultative opportunities. The increased liquidity across the sector will inevitably feedback into performance-based rewards. As the market depth increases so will the trading security - no more doubt about collecting your winnings. Equally inevitably, this will lead to dealing with a better class of criminal - Haberdashers' Aske's or Eton as opposed to Strangeways or the East End. The range of available consultancy work will increase. Investment houses, Super League teams, market makers/brokers, media, trading operations, government and regulators will all be buying in professional analytical skills.
The deferred gratification of staying out of the loop as long as possible is an earner for a strategic analyst.
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