The Premier League is huge in Asia but there is often a high price to pay for betting on its matchesThere is a scene in an early episode of The Simpsons that says quite a lot about sports fans in general, and fans who gamble on sport in particular. Krusty the Clown and his accountant are watching a basketball game on TV. “Let me get this straight,” the accountant says. “You took all the money you made franchising your name and bet it against the Harlem Globetrotters?” To which Krusty wails: “But I thought the Generals were due.”The Globetrotters crossed the line between a spectator sport and scripted entertainment. Outside Springfield – where it was the local Mafia don who...
Chucking out press releases about ending the practices of grid girls and swimsuit-wearing promotions workers to claim some sort of moral high ground should ring a few alarm bellsTo the list of Great Woke‑ings of our time, we must formally add the gambling industry. This year has seen the disbandment of the Presidents’ Club, Formula One’s pious announcement that it was ending the practice of grid girls and now the Gambling Commission demanding the industry’s biggest conference stops expecting female promotions workers to wear swimsuits on the basis that it is “a significant stain on the industry’s reputation”.Can you imagine how disgusting and depraved the practice must have been to significantly stain the gambling industry’s “reputation”? This is a business...
During this splendid week of racing, football and rugby union, fans face a bombardment of betting advertising. But there are already too many punters loaded up with debt and anguishThey say there is more Guinness spilt annually at the Cheltenham Festival than champagne quaffed at Royal Ascot. It’s a hoary old saw that probably isn’t true, but helps add to the sense of chaotic ribaldry with which National Hunt racing’s annual March jamboree is associated compared to its supposedly more genteel and moneyed Flat equivalent. In the coming days scenes of bawdy triumph and utter despair will unfold in what us hacks are obliged to refer to at least once per year as the great natural amphitheatre of Prestbury Park,...
Royal & Ancient Golf Club says it’s not practical to install separate changing rooms so women have to use facilities 100 yards away in a separate buildingMore than two years after a historic vote by the Royal & Ancient Golf Club seemingly to end centuries of discrimination by admitting women to the club, female members still have no changing room inside the St Andrews clubhouse. Instead women, who were allowed to become members from September 2014, are obliged to use facilities 100 yards away in a separate building, the R&A-owned Forgan House. Related: Muirfield members face their demons again: is it time to let the ladies in? | Marina Hyde Continue reading...
Ancient Athens was arguably run more successfully than the FA for quite a long time, so why doesn’t the ruling body adopt a lot-drawing system for selecting council members – how could it possibly be worse?Biannual news in catatonia, now, with suggestions that next month’s Football Association council meeting may feature discussion on moving into the late 20th century. This would feel radical. It is normally advisable to think of these gatherings as akin to the movie Awakenings – except with all the hope, tenderness and learning stripped out. Related: FA aims to double number of women involved in football by end of the decade Continue reading...