Betting websites

[Clarke Healy]

Hi guys,

Sorry to hear about some of your lost/missing funds. I'm in the same boat and am owed money I like to recover. I wondered why they were all of a sudden accepting large bets in the last few weeks, now it seems clear they had no intention on paying them out.

If anyone has any news on developments please personal msg me or post on this thread.

The news I'm getting from people in the industry is that there was something fishy. Perhaps Gerard Daffy and other board members were grossly over paying themselves. All speculative information.

 

[Lensen]

still no payment, rang up and was promised it would be tomorrow

have told them this is their last chance, if not paid by tuesday (to give enough time to hit my account) i'm lodging a formal complaint with the regulators. hopefully that works

in hindsight

[youtube]gQXP7DtIfmI[/youtube]

0:06

 

[asanque]

One thing I'm annoyed about is that the ACT Gambling Commission only asked for a $250k bond from Sportsalive.

Surely that would barely cover one week of potential losses?

Edit: Anyone at Bet247 looks okay.
Check the website:
http://www.bet247.com.au/

Second Edit:
I just spoke to customer service at Tom Waterhouse and asked about Sportsalive customers
Nothing finalised yet but could be worth dropping a few phone calls there to show Tom that there are plenty of affected SA clientele out there.

 

[JohnC76]

One thing I'm annoyed about is that the ACT Gambling Commission only asked for a $250k bond from Sportsalive.

Surely that would barely cover one week of potential losses?

Edit: Anyone at Bet247 looks okay.
Check the website:
http://www.bet247.com.au/

Second Edit:
I just spoke to customer service at Tom Waterhouse and asked about Sportsalive customers
Nothing finalised yet but could be worth dropping a few phone calls there to show Tom that there are plenty of affected SA clientele out there.

Tom can help us??

 

[asanque]

Tom can help us??

Sportsalive made $5 million last year so it could be a profitable business (as most bookies should be!).

Who knows where the money went though?

Tom Waterhouse is looking for clientele, and where better than to get a big chunk of grateful clients from SA?

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

It'd be a pretty smart move on his behalf, and might force him to improve his offering if he wants to retain those customers longer term.

 

[Jan Juc]

It'd be a pretty smart move on his behalf, and might force him to improve his offering if he wants to retain those customers longer term.

Tom wasn't the only one sniffing around the rotting carcass on Friday morning looking for client information.

 

[Eddie Dingle]

I have a club on Puntclub.com and all our punting is through Sports Alive...

About 6 weeks ago we took 10.5k out to pay for our Cox Plate trip but we have lost the remaining 7k in our kitty which was to pay for piss and punting on the day.

I'm gonna smash Daffy's face in.

 

[timmidman]

Pardon my ignorance, so Waterhouse had no affiliation with bet 247 in the first place?

 

[JohnC76]

I have a club on Puntclub.com and all our punting is through Sports Alive...

About 6 weeks ago we took 10.5k out to pay for our Cox Plate trip but we have lost the remaining 7k in our kitty which was to pay for piss and punting on the day.

I'm gonna smash Daffy's face in.

Footyhead - i know how you feel mate. I am feeling for your punters club, for what its worth at least you retained a portion of your winnings.
Power and ManCity eh? At times like this even us rivals need to stick together (Crows/Liverpool); not to make light of a very bad situation.
I am guessing ACT Gaming Commision may take a while to get through to Monday morning..

JC

 

[Eddie Dingle]

Footyhead - i know how you feel mate. I am feeling for your punters club, for what its worth at least you retained a portion of your winnings.
Power and ManCity eh? At times like this even us rivals need to stick together (Crows/Liverpool); not to make light of a very bad situation.
I am guessing ACT Gaming Commision may take a while to get through to Monday morning..

JC

The directors of puntclub.com will be chasing it up but they have a snowballs chance in hell you would think. A mate of mine involved with the TAB heard that someone has basically nicked off with the loot. They hadn't paid employees super for two years allegedly so I find that a bit hard to believe.

It's a mess that was not supposed to happen according to the laws under which they were set up And you just know we will be the hard luck story that fixes this up.

I'm angry at Daffy, Sportsalive and puntclub.com they can all get ****ed.

 

[timmidman]

Tom Waterhouse rang me about an hour ago and assured me as a bet247 customer i will be transferred over to his site before the 31st like the website states. i think he'd be worth a call to sa customers. Didnt want to ask him, does anyone know if he was affilliated with this mob before it hit the fan?

 

[Eddie Dingle]

I reckon young Tommy is prepared to spend a bit to make a bit in the true punting way.

 

[KENT2008]

they are so shady, look at the website, it says "down for scheduled maintenance"
they can't even bring themselves to at least notify people of whats going on....doubt many people saw this coming

 

[Ill Chicken]

The industry knew Sports Alive weren't any good from the get go, run poorly with their markets in bad shape too.

Well there goes a few grand . I only started using SportsAlive last month too . I have also deposited money into several other Australian bookies in the last month including Luxbet, Sportingbet, Centrebet etc. Are these bookies any safer?

Are there any other Australian bookies that we should be withdrawing our money out of before they go **** up aswell?

Luxbet is fine, is part of Tabcorp, while Sportingbet owns Centrebet and is obviously a subsidiary of Sportingbet UK, you won't have any problems with them.

Sportsbet and IAS are owned by Paddy Power (massive Irish bookmaker).

You'd want to keep an eye on bookies that are small time or don't have a big market share as if they take a couple of big hits, then they could be in trouble in a very short time.

 

[Brave Sir Robin]

Sportsalive made $5 million last year so it could be a profitable business (as most bookies should be!).

Who knows where the money went though?

Tom Waterhouse is looking for clientele, and where better than to get a big chunk of grateful clients from SA?

Everybody keeps quoting that $5m 'profit' figure as if it's gospel but the reality is that was actually very poor journalism. $5m was not the operating profit, it was the profit made from wagering before expenses. Ditto for the $4m year before.

As side note it's funny how for a company that employed maybe 30 people so many people think they have an inside word on what was going on there. I got burnt by them too, but nobody ran off with any money, least of all Gerard Daffy. There was no money to run away with.

 

[Jan Juc]

As side note it's funny how for a company that employed maybe 30 people so many people think they have an inside word on what was going on there. I got burnt by them too, but nobody ran off with any money, least of all Gerard Daffy. There was no money to run away with.

This.

Another example of this being everyone on the intrawebs likes to talk in riddles and pretend they have the inside word on everything - yet nobody (racing media included) has even whispered or made mention of the recent stroke suffered by one of Australia's most recognisable bookmaker....

 

[pmalcolm1984]

Lady from ACT Gaming Commission called me this morning after I left a vitriolic message with them on Friday.

"They are monitoring the situation". They are a commission, they should be enforcing the law, not monitoring after someone has seemingly broken it. Morons.

Sportsalive is not bet247, so any hopes of people getting their money back through some Waterhouse takeover appears non-existent. Bet247 simply used Sportsalive's markets I believe... If they don't find another bookie's markets to use (or have someone pick them up), then they won't exist as a business anymore.

Thinking about it more and more over the weekend, this mob can't have segregated punter's funds from business operations. If they had, then there shouldn't have been an issue in paying out credit balances, unless they got smashed by a couple of really big bets. Anyway, it suggests to me that they were mingled and likelihood of 100% recovery is almost non-existent.

 

[asanque]

Everybody keeps quoting that $5m 'profit' figure as if it's gospel but the reality is that was actually very poor journalism. $5m was not the operating profit, it was the profit made from wagering before expenses. Ditto for the $4m year before.

As side note it's funny how for a company that employed maybe 30 people so many people think they have an inside word on what was going on there. I got burnt by them too, but nobody ran off with any money, least of all Gerard Daffy. There was no money to run away with.

How much precisely would expenses be?
30 staff so factoring in approximately $50k per employee = $1.5 million.
Factor in rent, website costs, accounting fees, etc
Surely there is a lot of loose change remaining?

Also, assuming there was no money to run away with, there is a strong case for the directors who were trading whilst insolvent.

I know that I have been having big issues getting cash out for the last 3 months. If the writing was on the wall then, the directors should have put company into administration and provided an explanation to the punters.

Instead, Sportsalive has been put into adminstration via a creditor's petition and no one has said anything.

The ACT Gambling Commission needs to come down hard.

 

[pmalcolm1984]

Threw a bit of good money after all of this and have found out a few things.

Only only guy is left as a director and is also the secretary (Stephen Chant). Two guys resigned as Directors last Tuesday. Both live in Toorak suprise suprise... Probably within a stone's throw of all the other crooks in the area.

Bentley's in Sydney was the Auditor of their books. They will be in the gun big time I would think.

Bent and Cougle in Melbourne have been appointed Liquidators.

Owe LOTS of people money... NAB, Bank of Queensland, one of the Directors who resigned as well as a company have fixed/floating charges on the business. I wonder where these guys rank in the pecking order. If funds have been mingled, this becomes very complicated... As far as I'm concerned, if the business was making punting profits (before other expenses) of $4m and $5m, but losing money overall, all funds should belong to punters.

EDIT: Eddy Groves was involved in this mob a while back... Wish I had known this.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

So are there other books registered in the ACT? Or are these numptys the only one?

 

[Lensen]

So the money's done.

 

[pmalcolm1984]

So the money's done.

Just not sure mate. It will be very interesting to see how they do this.

Do punter's funds rank above secured creditors? They must in my mind. Its like saying a bank's creditor can lay their hands on depositor's funds.

However, if everything is in the wash together, well, what belongs to whom? Some guy will get paid $300k for two months worth of work to sort it all out, leaving less than what was there to distribute in the first place.

I have the phone number of the Director as well as the Liquidators. I will be calling them.

Irrespective of all of what has occured, I cannot get over that there is no statement, no email, no nothing from anyone. How hard would it be to send an email to everyone who had an account with something in it?

Not sure how everyone got funds in there, but just to bust their balls, if you have deposited via credit card, ring your bank and ask them to chargeback the transaction. Explain the situation, is worth a shot at least.

 

[pmalcolm1984]

So are there other books registered in the ACT? Or are these numptys the only one?

Trying to find this out. Google suggests only them and BET247. Reckon the clowns in the ACT would have a list of the others? Of course not.

But, should we be concerned about others in any states other than NT? e.g. pull funds from NSW and VIC bookies?

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

Keep an eye on Scott Ferguson's blog, I'd say he'll cover this as things come to light.

http://www.sportismadeforbetting.com/