Racing claimed a measure of success in its battle with the betting industry over the next levy scheme, after the Levy Board’s three government-appointed members recommended that bookies should pay levy on bets placed on foreign racing and that the “threshold” system, designed to benefit smaller betting shop operators, should be abolished. However, their report to government suggests that the target yield for the next levy, the scheme by which bookmakers contribute a percentage of their gross profits to the sport, should be £75m to £80m, well short of the £130m to £150m that racing had insisted it required.

Both sides are now likely to spend several days studying the details of the submission to Jeremy Hunt MP, the culture secretary, who is required by law to determine the 2011 levy after the racing and betting industries failed to reach agreement. However, action on thresholds and a levy on foreign racing were two significant pleas in racing’s submissions over the levy, and both have received a favourable response from the Board’s independent members.

If accepted by the government, the report could ensure that the sharp decline in levy yield in recent years will be arrested. However, the proposal to abolish thresholds is likely to face fierce opposition from bookmakers, who will claim that it will threaten the existence of a number of betting shops where margins are already tight.

The world’s first ever iPhone betting application is going live on Apple’s Store, welcome to the world of Betfair! At last it seems Apple has passed this app and today is the day we will all get to see it.

Winners always welcome at Betfair!

People say this is the first established betting company to release a sports betting App on the platform. The question is How popular will it be?

This app will be very easy to use and will allow customers to place bets with ease and of course as simply as possible, the application also uses GPS to locate and verify a customer’s location before they are permitted to bet.

Main features of this app includes:

- Bet on any Betfair Market

- Back or Lay bets on your iPhone

- Check your account status

- Easy to use and Fast over WiFi, 3G or Edge.

British online gaming firm Sportingbet is looking forward to a boost in turnover from this year’s soccer World Cup after reporting a 7 percent rise in second-quarter profit.

“It will help the turnover but I’ll be surprised if the profit gets a particular boost,” Chief Executive Andrew McIver told Reuters.

“Bookmakers don’t tend to make a lot of money on things like the World Cup because there’s not many teams and the predictable ones tend to be there at the end,” he said.

Bet on Football at EurosportBET

Sporting Bet, which gets almost 90 percent of its bets from Europe, said it was pleased the second quarter ended Jan. 31 came in line despite the recessionary backdrop.

The firm reported adjusted operating profit of 11.2 million pounds ($16.7 million) and saw net gaming revenue rise 22.3 percent to 52.6 million pounds.

But margins dropped to 8.2 percent in February from the group’s target of about 10 percent after a run of football results went against the firm despite more bets being placed.

“It was really down to more favourites winning in European football,” McIver said, adding that 65 percent of all the bets takes in Europe are on football, with the percentage increasing every year.

McIver also said that consolidation was not a priority for Sportingbet unless the right deal came along.

Iowa lawmakers are betting that you may want to someday bet on the Superbowl. Iowa Senate president Jack Kibbie has introduced a bill to legalize sports betting for professional sports.

Making changes to the gaming industry has been a hot topic in Des Moines, with lawmakers considering a number of other proposals aimed at generating revenue through gambling.

“Where’s the logic? The availability has been going up and the funding going down for education and treatment” says Doug Billingsley of ADDS Gambling treatment services.

Billingsly says gambling is the third leading cause of suicide nationwide.

He says he’s not against having more gambling but hopes there will be more investment in gambling treatment.

A tipster vowed to have a champion racehorse killed in a bid to stop it running in a major race – because he forgot to put a bet on it.

Andrew Rodgerson, 26, realised he faced owing £56,000 to a betting syndicate when he discovered he was too late to place the last piece of an accumulator on Conduit winning the last of a series of races. So he used terror tactics to try to force the owners of the four-year-old colt to withdraw it from the £500,000 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes.

After getting the numbers of the Ballymacoll Stud from newspaper adverts, Rodgerson sent a string of email and text messages to the manager with one reading: “We don’t believe you are taking the death of Conduit very seriously.

“We want the horse removed from the King George race this weekend. If you co-operate the horse will live. There are people in and around Newmarket ready and willing and there will also be people at Ascot on Saturday.”

But just two days before the race, Rodgerson was tracked down by detectives from two police forces who traced the messages to his bedroom 300 miles away in Balderstones, Rochdale, Greater Manchester, where he had set up a secret betting base. It emerged he had become so busy at his regular job at a travel agency he forgot to complete the sequence of bets he had been asked to place – leaving his syndicate out of pocket. Conduit later romped home to victory.

On Monday, Rodgerson, 26, pleaded guilty to threatening to commit damage and was sentenced to 34 weeks in prison, suspended for two years, and was ordered to complete 240 hours of unpaid work. His not guilty plea to blackmail was accepted.

Bolton Crown Court was told the offence occurred in July when Conduit, which had already won £1 million in prize money, was favourite to win the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes.

Peter Reynolds, the manager of the Ballymacoll stud in Ireland where Conduit was bred, initially received a text message which said: “Dear Peter, we would just like to warn you should Conduit run in the King George then the horse will be killed.” Mr Reynolds then alerted the colt’s trainer. “Mr Reynolds was concerned that, after 37 years in the industry, he had never received any threatening messages before,” said Duncan Wilcock, prosecuting.

Four hours later, Mr Reynolds got an email from a person who claimed he had heard a conversation in a bar in Manchester in which the horse Conduit was discussed and he claimed to have overheard that if it ran the horse would be killed. Mr Reynolds waited five days before calling police but then got the personal email from Rodgerson warning of people “ready and willing” to kill Conduit if he ran in the race.

Rodgerson’s mother later told police her son had had a gambling habit since he was 19 and kept large amounts of money in his bedroom. Rodgerson – said to come from a religious family – said he often placed £300-400 bets each way on particular horses up to five times a day and built up his syndicate through friends at a cricket club.

Defending, Joseph Hart said: “He met local businessmen who liked to put money on the horses, and liked to make clever bets. He was put in touch with a gambling syndicate and there were people putting up much bigger sums of money. “They told him when and where to put the bets on. They would bet on the best horses at the best races at the best odds.

“He was working in a travel agency but in the background he had the betting syndicate, which would insist on him putting bets on all through the day at specific times with specific companies and he forgot. “He had a great big bet to put on Conduit on the accumulator and he forgot. He was too busy at work and didn’t put it on at the right time with the right company. “And he suddenly found himself realising that if Conduit won he would owe this syndicate around £55,000. He was utterly and completely terrified – he simply didn’t know what to do. So he panicked and committed an unsophisticated and stupid crime.”

Conduit went on to win the race, netting more than £500,000 in prize money. In November, he won his second consecutive Breeders’ Cup title before running fourth in the Japan Cup. He is now standing as a stallion in Japan.

The explosion in betting has spawned an explosion in the last decade in the number of betting books.

Here are the best hints of the last decade.

1. “I never go looking for a sucker – I look for a champion and make a sucker of him.” (Amarillo Slim In A World Full Of Fat People).

2. “If a cheat wanted to devise an instrument for the express purpose of robbing people under the guise of a friendly get-together, he could have done no better than invent the playing card. A deck of cards in the hands of a cheat is a weapon of unsurpassed criminal possibilities.” (Phantoms Of The Card Table)

3. “Odds about the draw in a cricket match are on average the worst possible of the three options and yet however short the bookies go the evidence suggests that the madding throng of punters will follow them in. It’s as if punters believe cricket market-makers have some special insight into the weather.” (Betting To Win)

4. “A losing gambler is an albatross to everyone around him. he doesn’t get those warm glowing smiles rom his family. In a crap game he leaves the dice so damp with defeat that the stick man pushes them clinically to one side as though they were infected.” (Christmas In Las Vegas)

5. “There is a golden rule in betting on reality TV shows – avoid backing people from ethnic minorities. For whatever reason – perhaps Britain is more a racially intolerant nation than it lets on – non-white contestants rarely prosper.” (The Definitive Guide To Betting On Sport).

The FA has charged Mr.Burgess with two counts due to him betting on the outcome of matches that he played while at Rushden & Diamonds.

It is asserted that the games were played last season against Mansfield on the 28th February 2009 and versus Kidderminster Harriers on the 15th November 2008 and that both games were at Nene Park and ended in a 1-0 loss for Diamonds.

Mansfield Town were familiar with the accusations previously of him signing the loan from Luton Town.

A club representative declared: “We were aware of this prior to Andrew joining us”.

“We have spoken to Andrew about the matter and the charges are being refuted. We don’t anticipate any issues arising as a result of this.”

“All players at Mansfield Town Football Club are aware of the rules and regulations when it comes to betting on football matches.”

UEFA has named and shamed the five clubs they suspect to be involved in the European football betting scandal that shocked the sporting world last week.

German police led an investigation in what they described as the “biggest ever” match fixing scandal to hit football, with more than 200 games thought to have been affected, including UEFA Champions League and Europa League matches.

The clubs said to have been at the centre of the scandal are KF Tirana (Albania), FC Dinaburg (Latvia), KS Vilaznia (Albania), NK IB Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Honved (Hungary).

“UEFAand the national associations are facing a case of organised crime which exceeds the investigative power of sports jurisdiction, a UEFA statement read.

“UEFA will file criminal complaints, together with the relevant national associations, as soon as possible against clubs, officials and/or players in those countries concerned.”

UEFA has also said they believe there may be three referees involved with the scandal, and there could even be a an in-house official somehow connected to it all!

Paddy Power, the Irish bookmaker, demonstrated the scale of its international ambitions yesterday after signing a five-year sports betting deal with PMU, the French Pari-Mutuel horse-racing monopoly.

The company, which in May this year entered the Australian market by taking a 51 per cent stake in Sportsbet, the online bookie, is understood to have beaten 13 rivals to seal the PMU deal, including the British bookmakers William Hill, Ladbrokes and Coral.

Patrick Kennedy, the Paddy Power chief executive, said he hoped that the deal with PMU, which comes after legislation to open up France’s online sports betting market, would be the first of many such partnerships as regulation was brought in “across Europe and further afield”. “Financially we believe we’ll do well from this deal but strategically it has significant benefits,” he said. “If you are building an international business and marketing to media organisations, lotteries and gambling companies, being able to talk about the PMU deal is a fantastic calling card.”

PMU — otherwise known as Pari Mutuel Urbain — is Europe’s largest betting organisation with turnover last year of €9.3 billion (£8.4 billion), generated mainly by almost 10,000 retail outlets including cafés and bureaux de tabac with betting kiosks.

Under the terms of the deal, Paddy Power will provide PMU with fixed odds, risk management and event management services on a range of sports, although up to 80 per cent will be football-related. The technology for PMU’s move into online sports betting, tipped to happen in the first half of next year depending on when the new laws are passed, will be supplied by Orbis.

The agreement will result in the creation of 50 new jobs at its headquarters in Tallaght, Co Dublin, although it is planning a further 200 positions over the next three years to handle its international growth.

The news came as Paddy Power said it was confident of hitting full-year earnings forecasts after the return of more favourable sporting results in the fourth quarter, notably in football. After only four draws in the first 66 English Premiership fixtures, the next 51 games included 18 draws.

The founder of the online gambling site BetOnSports.com was sentenced Monday to more than four years in prison, ending a lengthy investigation and prosecution into one of the world’s largest offshore sports gambling companies.

Gary Kaplan, 50, must also forfeit $43.6 million in illegally obtained revenue as part of a plea agreement. He also has agreed not to block another $7 million being forfeited by associates. Prosecutors said Tuesday that Kaplan still has tens of millions in Swiss bank accounts.

Kaplan pleaded guilty in August to racketeering conspiracy, violating the Wire Wager Act and conspiring to violate it. Prosecutors had been investigating offshore sports gambling since 1997, and BetOnSports since 2001.

Kaplan, sentenced to four years and three months, could end up spending another year behind bars. He has been jailed for two years and seven months since his March 2007 arrest in Puerto Rico.

Kaplan’s attorneys had argued for leniency, including home confinement, and said he would like to pursue charitable projects to help the community.

But U.S. District Judge Carol Jackson said Kaplan’s two prior felonies, bookmaking and forgery, and a misdemeanor showed her he “continued to disrespect” the law. She said he broke laws he didn’t agree with, knowing his activity was illegal.

“Mr. Kaplan made an educated decision, a gamble if you will,” she said. “Now, here’s the payoff.”

She also ordered him to substance and mental health counseling, and to earn a high school diploma. And she said Kaplan may not launch or run a business without the permission of the probation office.

Online gaming is illegal in the U.S., and in 2006, a federal grand jury indicted Kaplan, his company and several associates. Three other former executives, including two of Kaplan’s siblings, have pleaded guilty and will be sentenced Tuesday. A fourth will be sentenced later.

Kaplan, a high-school dropout who started out as a New York bookie, founded the offshore betting company in 1995, setting up entities in Aruba, Antigua and eventually Costa Rica. The firm solicited U.S. citizens to place sports wagers by phone and over the Internet directly from their accounts.

In his guilty plea in August, Kaplan said BetOnSports had 1 million registered customers and accepted more than 10 million sports bets worth more than $1 billion in 2004 alone. His company, by then based in Costa Rica, employed 1,700 people.

Kaplan took BetOnSports public on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market in 2004, which netted him more than $100 million that was deposited in Swiss bank accounts. For the next two years, he served as a BetOnSports consultant.

Prosecutors said the company falsely advertised that its gambling operations were legal, and misled gamblers into believing that money transferred to BetOnSports was safe and available to withdraw at any time. Instead, investigators said, the money was used to expand operations, including purchase of a rival betting firm.

When BetOnSports ceased operation in 2006, customers lost more than $16 million.

Kaplan told Jackson in August that he initially believed that adhering to the laws in Aruba, Antigua, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and the United Kingdom kept him in good stead with U.S. laws. But he said he became aware as early as 2000 that such dealings violated U.S. law, and got confirmation in a legal opinion in 2002. Yet, he kept operating.

Kaplan apologized to the judge Monday for the “pain and embarrassment” he caused to his family, and said he’d “paid a monumental price for poor decisions.” His attorneys said that Kaplan, from his jail cell, has made six-figure contributions to St. Louis-area charities in recent months.

The case could have been filed anywhere in the U.S., but the Eastern District of Missouri’s former U.S. Attorney, Catherine Hanaway, was aggressive in going after online gambling operations.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Holtshouser said the case sends a message that the government is serious about enforcing sports-betting laws, tracking violations “even when they’re carried on off shore, and especially when U.S. citizens are trying to evade them.”

U.S. attorneys in New York, Pennsylvania and California have pursued other lesser figures in sports booking. A Kaplan business partner, Norman Steinberg, fled to Costa Rica after pleading guilty in Pennsylvania. Another associate, Gregory Haggard, is a fugitive, Holtshouser said.