"The year is ending on a sour note for sports bettors who had money on Costa Rica-based online betting site BetIslands.ag
(BI). After weeks of rumors, Bill Dozer of sports betting forum
SportsBookReview (SBR) posted the following on Tuesday morning: “We
finally talked with everyone involved. Unfortunately this looks like it
is about to end badly for players. This came to be because BI lost it’s
financial backer and the people left could not make it work.” Estimates
of the total amount lost by players are in the $1.3m-$1.5m range.
Despite this news, the BI site remains online.
Several hours after Dozer’s announcement, BI’s former GM ‘Jon’ posted
to SBR, claiming the site’s “financial backing pulled out
unexpectedly.” Jon himself claims to have left the site weeks earlier, a
statement that was immediately pounced on by forum members, who
recalled Jon’s post on Dec. 6 describing BI’s slow-pay problems as “just
a banking hurdle.” Jon has vehemently denied being BI’s owner, yet a
post by SBR’s Justin7 in July referred to Jon as “the owner of
BetIslands.” So was Jon the owner, or just some tattooed
twenty-something with a customer list having fun fun fun in the Costa
Rican sun until Daddy Warbucks took the bankroll away? Either way, while
Jon offered BI’s former players his apologies, the only hope he had to
offer was that “some of the larger shops that have the financial
prowlness [sic] will come in and help players out for the good of the
industry in general.”
Concern has now spread to the future of two other sportsbooks,
7RedSports and EZStreetSports, that have been linked to BI in the past.
7Red issued a statement denying any affiliation with BI and saying it
“has in no way been affected” by BI’s implosion. “Betislands and Jon
approached us about a potential merger but as you can see he had no
money to run his business let alone buy ours.”
BI was hardly an industry giant, and its US focus meant it was subjected to the same rough treatment that
has beat up virtually every sportsbook taking wagers on the National
Football League this season. BI was also known to offer overly generous
bonus schemes and rebates, which, while enticing, are rarely a sign of
long-term financial health. Throw in the fact that US-facing books pay a
small fortune for payment processing and there’s little margin for
error. It’s yet another expensive lesson for gamblers to trust their
online wagers with companies that have withstood both the test of time
as well as the serious bouts of hiccups that periodically strike this
industry. As investment titan Warren Buffet once observed, “only when
the tide goes out do you find out who is not wearing a bathing suit.”
BetIslands’ failure is particularly galling for the SBR brain trust,
who are being called every name in the book by irate bettors left
holding empty stockings this Christmas, especially since SBR upgraded
the sportsbook to a ‘B’ rating in November 2011 after BetIslands
“verified their backing,” which SBR argued was proof of their “financial
security.” For the record, there’s no evidence to suggest anything like
the BetED/Covers fiasco,
in which BetEd took the fall even through the Covers’ boys are widely
presumed to have been BetEd’s beneficial owners via a lucrative revenue
sharing deal with their former #1 recommended sportsbook. Regardless,
it’s a sobering reminder that trust is that rarest of commodities,
difficult to obtain and even harder to regain once it’s been lost.
"
Pissed off
"The year is ending on a sour note for sports bettors who had money on Costa Rica-based online betting site BetIslands.ag
(BI). After weeks of rumors, Bill Dozer of sports betting forum
SportsBookReview (SBR) posted the following on Tuesday morning: “We
finally talked with everyone involved. Unfortunately this looks like it
is about to end badly for players. This came to be because BI lost it’s
financial backer and the people left could not make it work.” Estimates
of the total amount lost by players are in the $1.3m-$1.5m range.
Despite this news, the BI site remains online.
Several hours after Dozer’s announcement, BI’s former GM ‘Jon’ posted
to SBR, claiming the site’s “financial backing pulled out
unexpectedly.” Jon himself claims to have left the site weeks earlier, a
statement that was immediately pounced on by forum members, who
recalled Jon’s post on Dec. 6 describing BI’s slow-pay problems as “just
a banking hurdle.” Jon has vehemently denied being BI’s owner, yet a
post by SBR’s Justin7 in July referred to Jon as “the owner of
BetIslands.” So was Jon the owner, or just some tattooed
twenty-something with a customer list having fun fun fun in the Costa
Rican sun until Daddy Warbucks took the bankroll away? Either way, while
Jon offered BI’s former players his apologies, the only hope he had to
offer was that “some of the larger shops that have the financial
prowlness [sic] will come in and help players out for the good of the
industry in general.”
Concern has now spread to the future of two other sportsbooks,
7RedSports and EZStreetSports, that have been linked to BI in the past.
7Red issued a statement denying any affiliation with BI and saying it
“has in no way been affected” by BI’s implosion. “Betislands and Jon
approached us about a potential merger but as you can see he had no
money to run his business let alone buy ours.”
BI was hardly an industry giant, and its US focus meant it was subjected to the same rough treatment that
has beat up virtually every sportsbook taking wagers on the National
Football League this season. BI was also known to offer overly generous
bonus schemes and rebates, which, while enticing, are rarely a sign of
long-term financial health. Throw in the fact that US-facing books pay a
small fortune for payment processing and there’s little margin for
error. It’s yet another expensive lesson for gamblers to trust their
online wagers with companies that have withstood both the test of time
as well as the serious bouts of hiccups that periodically strike this
industry. As investment titan Warren Buffet once observed, “only when
the tide goes out do you find out who is not wearing a bathing suit.”
BetIslands’ failure is particularly galling for the SBR brain trust,
who are being called every name in the book by irate bettors left
holding empty stockings this Christmas, especially since SBR upgraded
the sportsbook to a ‘B’ rating in November 2011 after BetIslands
“verified their backing,” which SBR argued was proof of their “financial
security.” For the record, there’s no evidence to suggest anything like
the BetED/Covers fiasco,
in which BetEd took the fall even through the Covers’ boys are widely
presumed to have been BetEd’s beneficial owners via a lucrative revenue
sharing deal with their former #1 recommended sportsbook. Regardless,
it’s a sobering reminder that trust is that rarest of commodities,
difficult to obtain and even harder to regain once it’s been lost.
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