Basically, bad bad meffs setting themselves up as bookmaker affiliates and getting paid on average 30% of peoples losses, encouraging gamblers to place heavy bets on likely losers, and temporarily editing betslips via page source to lie about stakes and winnings.
The biggest Twitter account for it, @FootyAccums has just been caught at it. Them fuckers alone have raked in half a million quid this year doing it according to their published accounts. Ropey as fuck.
Some people seem to think Twitter accounts are more reliable than a guy on spice in Piccadilly Gardens hanging out of a phonebox with his pants down shouting his pound accy tips at you.
Thereâs a lot of kinda similar stuff that happens in a more mundane way as well, in that you get these stupid fan accounts who post all the super basic footy bantz stuff from an âArsenal fan perspectiveâ or whatever, and get retweeted by all their super basic twitter mates who have 000âs of followers. The aim is to basically reach over a certain number of followers (say 50k), at which point you can start making money off betting companies by posting about your accumulators or whatever. Obviously, the more followers you have the more money you get for it.
Would be properly small fry stuff except these accountsâ followers will mostly be kids. You wonder what that generationâs relationship to gambling will be like when they grow up.
Yeah. From what i understand they were buying the data of people whoâd requested exclusions from gambling sites, and the sites werenât extending bans to users who signed up by these affiliates. Think they were also letting people sign up just by changing freemail addresses, etc.
Was reading an article about this on Football365 that suggested itâs properly easy to edit screenshots to make it look like youâve won and/or exaggerating the odds that are available on certain bets. And not just on a âIâm good at Photoshopâ level, but literally just changing a bit of the source code. Suggests that loads of these accounts have been at it, was certainly how @FootyAccums got caught out.
Obviously all betting advertising/marketing in this country needs to be seriously looked at and restricted, but I find all the social media chummy banter shit (paddy power seem to be the worst, but theyâre all at it) particularly nauseating.
Yeah I started following a few of these on twitter yâknow. I never bet on football but, yâknow, the odd tip here and there might tempt me. Soon realised there was something not quite right about them. And now I stay away from the whole business. Whoâve you got youâve got TheSpainTrain, Bet Club, ThePuntersPage, a few others⌠I dunno which ones are legit or not.
One of them the other night was tweeting a few receipts of people whoâs smashed thousands on France Luxembourg and saying âspare a thought for these poor ladsâ. I passed up the opportunity.
FOBTâs are horrendous. Quite an easy way to win money, but also ridiculously easy to lose loads. They exploit problem betters, no doubt about it. Iâve seen people put literally thousands of pounds into them. There are limits technically now, but people just move along the machines, and the staff are trained to turn a blind eye.
They should either impose serious limits on them - maybe compulsory registered cards and daily limits, and/or limit each shop to one, not four. Until a few years ago i think only one bookie was allowed within a square mile of another. I could walk to fifteen now, no exaggeration.
A good start would be some high profile Premier League clubs ditching official betting partners and shirt sponsors. Itâs frighteneing how quickly itâs crept in. Most football fans now see it as part of the experience.