Catching the Bookies - Tennis Courtsiding

Why tennis 'courtsiding' was my dream job


Gamblers keen to get an edge over their rivals, have taken to employing "courtsiders", who send back live data to syndicates and betting companies while a game is under way. Last year a British man became the first person to be arrested while engaged in the practice, at the Australian Open tennis tournament.

For Dan Dobson it was a dream job. Still only 22 years old, he got to travel the world with some friends, earn a decent salary and watch top-level tennis.
He was not just a spectator though, he had to send back live data to the gambling syndicate he worked for, as each player scored a point.
To do this he used a simple device hidden inside his shorts.
"You would sit on court for as long as you were needed pressing the buttons, which were sewn into my trousers and relay the scores back to London. You'd press one for Djokovic, two for Murray, for example, as fast as you could," he says.
He is affable with the insouciance of youth and the confidence that comes with being well over six-foot tall, head-and-shoulders above most people.
Courtsiding is inextricably linked to "in-game" betting - gambling while an event is taking place.
This betting happens on exchanges like Betfair, where gamblers pit themselves against one another, offering constantly changing odds on a player or team winning or losing, as a match progresses.

"The purpose of us being there is that we can send back information a lot faster than TV or betting companies can get the data," says Dobson.
That information would be fed back in milliseconds to the syndicate Dan worked for in London. It is based in a modest office storage block in Battersea, south London and run by Steve High, CEO of Sporting Data limited, which provides data and services to the syndicate he founded.
The syndicate designed betting software for tennis which works out the probability of each player winning the match at any point and how the odds are moving in real time on the betting exchange.
Steve showed me the kind of device Dan used, a modified game console controller.
"We had an automated system whereby the point data would come in and then we would cancel any bets that we had in the market that we deemed were at the wrong price," he says.

"And then we would place bets straight back into the market that we deemed were now the correct price."
The difference in getting that data first and changing the syndicate's betting position can be worth thousands of pounds per point, sometimes even tens of thousands, and there are a lot of points in a tennis match.
This has led many other syndicates to employ courtsiders. Steve High says he has been told reliably that 75 people were at last year's Wimbledon final, "sending information back or betting on their own".
He added: "The ones who were best at it, came up with the best odds and had the fastest data would have been the ones who made the lion's share of the money."
The All England Club, which runs the Wimbledon tournament, did not want to comment.
At the tournaments he went to in the Middle East, New Zealand and Australia, Dobson would recognise the courtsiders working for other syndicates or betting companies but he never talked to them. They were his rivals.
The tennis authorities have been trying to weed out courtsiders for years. Tennis umpires also provide official score data which is used by betting companies - and they don't want anyone else on their turf, getting valuable information from other sources.
The major tournaments like Wimbledon, and the Tennis Integrity Unit set up by the sport's governing bodies, employ spotters to try to find people like Dobson, who in turn do their best not to get caught.
"You get to know them because you'll see them looking around for you, and some of the [spotters] are the daughters and the sons of the umpires and so it's a bit of a game of cat and mouse," he says.
Dobson knew he was breaking the rules of his ticket, which was why he was hiding the device he was using to send back data. But he thought the worst that could happen to him, if caught, was that he would be thrown out.
But in January 2014 Dan Dobson's photo was in newspapers and websites across the world when he was the first person to be arrested while engaged in courtsiding.
Australian Tennis Open - 2014
A number of 'spotters' attend sporting events
It happened at the Australian Tennis Open in Melbourne, and this is the first time he has talked publicly about the incident.
"I was sat there all day on the same court in a 45-degree heat, pretty uncomfortable," he says.
"Towards the end of the day, I walked off court and a cop grabbed my arms, put them in a pair of handcuffs - and that was kind of when I knew something was up."
Dan was accused of trying to corrupt the betting outcome of a match, under legislation introduced by the state of Victoria, Australia's sporting capital.
They thought I was having an impact on the integrity of the sport, having contact with the players, corrupting the sport in some way
If convicted, he faced a possible 10 years in jail, but as soon as the police started to question him, he felt it was clear they didn't understand what he was doing. "They thought I was having an impact on the integrity of the sport, having contact with the players, corrupting the sport in some way," he says. "But the truth is that's not what courtsiding is."
Although he had broken the terms of his ticket, courtsiding is not illegal and there was widespread criticism of the police's actions. Even supporters of tougher measures against courtsiders, like Chris Eaton director of sports integrity at the International Centre for Sports Security, thought the police had picked the wrong target.
"Courtsiding should be criminalised but the fact is it's a very minor issue compared to match-fixing and the corrupting of sports organisations in South-East Asia," he says.
Dan Dobson
The gambling syndicates operating in South-East Asia openly advertise for courtsiders, or scouts as they are also known, to work at football games in the UK and Europe.
The charges against Dobson were dropped but his career as a courtsider was shortlived. Following his arrest, Sporting Data limited got rid of the six courtsiders they employed - although they did keep on Dobson in a different role.
Would he go back to his old job? He smiles and says he would do it in a flash.
"I do feel, not hard done by, but it was a case of bad luck. I would have definitely carried on, it was an opportunity of a lifetime."

Interesting what all goes on...
thanks for the info...

That edge has been nullified with live scores now being shown on most "in betting" sites and a 10-15 sec delay is also in place to insure against this practice..

Even a Millisecond counts Titch!!!! Also today I read

UK 'flash crash' trader appears in court

A UK financial trader accused of contributing to the 2010 Wall Street "flash crash" has appeared in court.
The US Department of Justice wants to extradite Navinder Singh Sarao, 36, on charges of wire fraud, commodities fraud and market manipulation.
Mr Sarao told a hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Wednesday that he opposed extradition to the US.
He was granted bail, which has been set at £5.05m. A review hearing has been set for 26 May.
Mr Sarao must pay £5m and his parent's must pay £50,000. The conditions of bail state that he must live and sleep at his parents address in Hounslow, west London, each night, he cannot travel internationally and cannot use the internet.
During the flash crash of 6 May 2010, the Dow Jones index lost 700 points in a matter of minutes - wiping about $800bn off the value off US shares - before recovering just as quickly.
Separately, US regulators filed civil claims against Mr Sarao, adding that he made $40m (£27m) over five years.
It is claimed the trader used automated computer programmes to manipulate share prices.
Scotland Yard confirmed Mr Sarao was arrested by the Met's extradition unit.
"This has come as a bolt from the blue for Mr Sarao," his lawyer Joel Smith told the magistrates' court.
'Amazing insight'
"This is like something out of a thriller - it's a most remarkable story," said BBC economics editor Robert Peston.
"The allegation is that he was sending what are known as spoof orders to sell futures contracts in the US stock market. He would drive the price of the stock down... then withdraw the sell orders, but the price would already have fallen.
"He would then buy the orders back and guarantee a profit for himself. According the charge sheet, he did this thousands and thousands of times over many years.
"This is an amazing insight into the way computers have completely transformed the stock market business."
'Significant profits'
The infamous flash crash saw US markets plunge rapidly, only to then rebound just as quickly. Regulators blamed high-frequency traders placing multiple sell orders.
High-speed trading is where share dealers create computer algorithms to buy and sell stocks in milliseconds.
The Justice Department said in a statement that "Sarao's alleged manipulation earned him significant profits and contributed to a major drop in the US stock market on May 6, 2010".
The statement continued: "By allegedly placing multiple, simultaneous, large-volume sell orders at different price points - a technique known as 'layering' - Sarao created the appearance of substantial supply in the market."
Mr Sarao was then able to buy and sell futures contracts tied to the value of the share indexes, it is alleged.
'Integrity and stability'
In a separate announcement, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) released details of civil charges against Mr Sarao and his company Nav Sarao Futures Limited.
The statement alleges market manipulation over five years, and as recently as 6 April.
CFTC director of enforcement Aitan Goelman said: "Protecting the integrity and stability of the US futures markets is critical to ensuring a properly functioning financial system.
"Today's actions make clear that the CFTC, working with its partners on the criminal side, will find and prosecute manipulators of US futures markets wherever they may be."

This is even more bizarre. There always a way!!!!

'Ghost games' betting scam costs bookie thousands of pounds


A bookmaker has lost thousands of pounds in a betting scam, where bets are placed on games that never happen.
Isle of Man-based Celton Manx, who operate Sbobet, paid out on FC Slutsk's 2-1 'friendly win' against fellow Belarus side Shakhter Soligorsk .
But the match did not take place, and both clubs say they were unwitting victims of a "ghost game".
"We got a statement that the game took place, so we paid out," said Celton Manx executive director Bill Mummery.
The statement, in Russian, was supposed to have come from FC Slutsk but both Belarusian Premier League clubs have denied any involvement in the fixture to the Belarus FA, who have reported the matter to the police and Uefa.
Belarus police are also investigating a complaint from Shakhter, claiming that their website and mailbox had been hacked.
What is a ghost game?

It is one of two types of 'fabricated match'. Put simply, a fixture is listed through one of numerous companies that provide data to the bookmaking industry. But it is either a 'fake match', one that takes places but is played between two different teams than the ones listed or a 'ghost game', one that doesn't take place at all.
A game that does not take place. Why would anyone fall for that?

As Shakhter have claimed, their website was hacked into a couple of days beforehand, and a fake match report was added. "It is very clever and very lucrative," said Fred Lord, director of anti-corruption and transparency operations at the International Centre for Sport Security.
Why are ghost games attractive?

Match-fixers do not have to bribe officials, teams or players to fix a game because the game is not actually happening.

Why do bookmakers pay out?

The industry is based on goodwill. Punters expect to be paid out promptly and unless there is reason for suspicion, that is what happens. In this instance, Sbobet were suspicious and contacted FC Slutsk. Once they received a statement saying the game took place, there was no further reason to withhold payment.

But why offer odds on a friendly match in Belarus in the first place?

Football betting is a vast industry, involving virtually every country in the world. Interest in the sport everywhere is high. It would be naive to think the only matches of interest are those that receive the greatest focus in the UK.
In the wider scheme of things, how big is the ghost games problem?

"There are not a lot of so-called ghost games going on to my knowledge," said Kevin Carpenter, a sports lawyer at Hill Dickinson who specialises in regulatory and integrity matters. "We are only just starting to scrape the surface of the extent of what is going on with the help of betting monitoring organisations and the input of global bodies such as Interpol (International Criminal Police Organisation), but I would say match-fixing is a much bigger issue."

How much money are we talking about in relation to match-fixing?

"From sport we have the figure at $140bn (£90.98bn) being laundered through illegal betting schemes," said Lord. "It is a serious problem. In some jurisdictions, there is little to no regulation. It is easy for people to commit betting fraud, which then feeds serious crime."
Can the problem be solved?

Lord, who was previously the director of Interpol's anti-corruption office, says there are three main areas to focus on:
1: He wants gambling to be "legalised globally" and "regulated".
2: The exchange of information from betting organisations should be regulated, says Lord. "If betting institutions find evidence of suspicious betting, it should compel them to report it to a law enforcement body or a sporting institution," he added.
3: "Clamp down on the illegal betting syndicates worldwide. A hostile environment needs to be created so that the people committing betting fraud know there will be punishments for them," said Lord.

Where there is a will there is a way. people will do anything for that little piece or paper..