What an interesting week or two it's been in the betting world. Across the globe, literally, gambling is being tested and pushed in entirely different ways.
• In England, for example, a trading firm called Centaur Corporate recently announced it was forming a sports betting hedge fund called the Galileo Fund. Basically, instead of investing in stocks, the managers of the Galileo invest in the outcome of sporting events -- mainly soccer, rugby and tennis. "We're not a gambling company, we're a trading group but our markets happen to be sports probability and statistics," Tony Woodhams, the boss at Centaur, told the UK's Independent.
But Woodhams knows this is a volatile market, so the Galileo bills itself as being for experienced investors only, the kind that also happens to be willing to invest a minimum of 100,000 euros (or $140,000).
To read more about the Galileo fund, plus an update on Congressman Barney Frank's efforts to legalize Internet gambling in the United States, you must be an ESPN Insider.
- Editor in Chief of ESPN The Magazine
- Writes "Behind The Bets" blog on sports gambling
- Authored seven books, including "The Odds"
ABOUT THIS BLOG
Chad Millman
Chad Millman, Editor in Chief of ESPN The Magazine, joined The Mag as an associate editor in 1998. A year later he left to write "The Odds" -- about a trio of Vegas bookmakers and wiseguys -- and to find riches working for an Internet company. He made tens of dollars on "The Odds," the web biz tanked and he returned to The Mag. He also worked at Sports Illustrated and wrote some other books, including "Iceman" with Chuck Liddell, "Invincible" with Vince Papale, "Pickup Artists" with Lars Anderson, and "The Detonators." His most recent books are the national bestseller "The Ones Who Hit the Hardest," about the blood feud between the 70s Steelers and Cowboys, written with Shawn Coyne, and the New York Times bestseller "They Call Me Baba Booey", with Gary Dell'Abate.
Millman's daily blog explores the culture of sports gambling; on Mondays and Fridays in the fall, he investigates trends in point spreads related to professional football.
E-mail Chad: Chad.X.Millman@espn.com
Follow Chad on Twitter: @ChadMillman
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