Sports – I want it

“Does money won feel better than money earned, or am I nuts?”

When I heard this phrase coming out of Ari Gold’s mouth in hit TV Show Entourage I couldn’t help but think about online betting firms and how it would make a really great subject for a post. Being one of the most controversial industry nowadays is by itself a good enough reason.

As seen in the picture, bwin.com has language localization

In my previous post I mentioned F.C. Barcelona refused to sign many sponsors in the latest years, one of the most interesting coming from betting tycoon Bet and Win¹. In the end they couldn’t convince them to put their name on the jersey, but they got a pretty nice deal as the “official betting webpage” of the club. That in the end meant I was sent a 6 euro coupon to play for free. Everyone loves this kind of coupons, there’s nothing to be lost, and you get to feel the rush of winning money without risk. On a surprisingly lucky streak I managed to get 20 euros out of the coupon, and then lost everything. And I also lost the money on my sister’s coupon.

Sponsored by Qatar Foundation: How something might not be worth 200 million $

I was born Barcelona, a city bathed by the Mediterranean and thus at the heart of European commerce and trends. Apart from cooking with olive oil one trend we all strongly follow comes from up north though, and that is soccer (we call it football). Our team, F.C. Barcelona, arguably one of the best teams in history, has a unique ideosincracy, treating its supporters with utmost respect (we are serious people, cheering in the stadium is surprisingly polite) and consulting them on most of the important decisions. In short, there are presidential elections once every 4 years and a randomly selected group of paying supporters get to say their opinion¹.

I mention all this because they all recently accepted a business proposal from the newly elected president, Sandro Rossell: the team would be earning money from a jersey sponsor, Qatar Foundation. I won’t discuss the terms of the deal, it was so huge that it even got featured at the cover of Financial Times.