SportingBet profits up, World Cup hopes down

Vieri bad day for the punter
Vieri bad day for the punter

Sportingbet has reported a welcome 7% rise in second-quarter profits but is not expecting any favours from betting on the World Cup this summer – other than the obvious boost to turnover. “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,” said Chief Executive Andrew McIver, clearly oblivious to that fact some of us did our bollocks betting on the 2002 World Cup when France were sent packing without so much as scoring a goal, Portugal and Argentina also failed to qualify from their group and Italy lost to South Korea after a combination of scandalous refereeing and a shocking open goal missed by Christian Vieri. Not that anyone’s still bitter about it eight years on… Read more.