Punters: How Paddy Power Bet Billions and Changed Gambling Forever


Book Description

From cheeky high-street bookmaker to billion-dollar business: the incredible story behind Paddy Power's unstoppable rise. Flutter Entertainment, the parent company of Paddy Power, is the largest gambling business in the world. The evidence of that success is visible everywhere, from shop fronts and bus shelters to sporting arenas and smartphone screens. The company's rise to this point has been rapid, but like any gambler worth their salt, Paddy Power has always succeeded in finding an edge. At the outset those innovations were modest, like offering odds on television shows and giving punters money back on losing bets, but as the company's ambition grew, so too did its determination to stay one step ahead of the competition, whatever the cost... Impeccably researched and informed by dozens of insider interviews, Punters is the incredible story of how an unlikely band of misfits and visionaries bet on the future of the gambling industry and won big. But it's also the story of how that victory may have come at an extraordinary cost - to their customers and society at large.




Tony 10


Book Description

Tony 10 was the online betting username of Tony O'Reilly, the postman who became front-page news in 2011 after he stole €1.75 million from An Post while he was a branch manager in Gorey. He used the money to fund a gambling addiction that began with a bet of €1 and eventually rose to €10 million, leading to the loss of his job, his family, his home – and winning him a prison sentence. From the heart-stopping moments in a hotel room in Cyprus with his wedding money riding on the Epsom Derby, to the euphoria of winning half a million over a weekend, to the late goals and the horses falling at the last fence, Tony 10 is the story of an ordinary man's journey from normality to catastrophe. At times, he vowed to get out while he was ahead, only to be taken by another surge of adrenaline, falling deeper and deeper into a compulsion that consumed his life. His disappearance on the morning the fraud was discovered led to a surreal three days on the run in Northern Ireland, and ultimately his arrest, conviction and sentencing to four years in jail. Tony 10 is the mesmerising story of the secret life of a pathological gambler – as well as the most compelling account yet of the damage wrought by the online gambling industry.




Jackpot


Book Description

A striking exposé of the insidious business practices that have generated enormous profits for the companies operating within the UK's gambling industry. 'A methodical, sensitive and occasionally harrowing polemic about the gambling industry . . . The book has echoes of Patrick Radden Keefe's award-winning Empire of Pain.' SUNDAY TIMES 'A serious attempt to grapple with the extent of Britain's problem.' THE SPECTATOR 'Persuasive.' FINANCIAL TIMES 'Fascinating.' IRISH TIMES 'Eye-opening.' TELEGRAPH *** 716: the number of gambling logos displayed in a single Premier League football match £421 MILLION: the salary of Bet365's CEO in 2020. £14 BILLION: the annual losses incurred by British gamblers. Over half of the population gambles in the UK every year. How did we get here? What keeps us hooked when the odds are so heavily stacked against us? And who are the real winners and losers? Jackpot dives deep into gambling's seedy underbelly to answer these questions, and many more. From the first National Lottery draw in 1569 to the Wild West of today's online casinos, Guardian reporter Rob Davies follows the money to show who profits - and at what cost.




McMafia


Book Description

Drugs, weapons, migrant labour, women — these are just a few of the many goods that effortlessly cross national borders in this globalized age, often without the knowledge or permission of the nations concerned. How is this remarkable criminal feat managed?From gun runners in the Ukraine, to money launderers in Dubai, cyber criminals in Brazil, racketeers in Japan, and the booming marijuana industry in western Canada, McMafia builds a breathtaking picture of a secret and bloody business.Internationally celebrated writer Misha Glenny crafts a fascinating, highly readable, and impressively well-researched account of the emergence of organized crime as a globalized phenomenon and shows how its secret and bloody business mirrors both the methods and the rewards of the legitimate world economy. Employing his journalistic talent and his prior experience covering organized crime in Eastern Europe, Glenny reports on his travels around the planet to investigate this worrying and worsening situation. After comprehensively surveying the criminal scene, Glenny ends by considering the future of organized crime. McMafia is an important book that assembles all the pieces of this worldwide puzzle for the first time.




Champagne Football


Book Description

THE NO.1 BESTSELLER! 'I read it in one sitting, it's a superb book' Eamon Dunphy, The Stand 'An astonishing exposé' Martin Ziegler, The Times Over the course of fifteen years, John Delaney ran the Football Association of Ireland as his own personal fiefdom. He had his critics, but his power was never seriously challenged until 2019, when Mark Tighe and Paul Rowan published a sequence of stories in the Sunday Times containing damaging revelations about his personal compensation and the parlous financial situation of the FAI. Delaney's reputation as a great financial manager was left in tatters. He resigned under pressure, and the FAI was left hoping for a massive bail-out from the Irish taxpayer. Champagne Football is a gripping, sometimes darkly hilarious and often enraging piece of reporting by the award-winning journalists who finally pulled back the curtain on the FAI's mismanagement. ____________ 'Excellent' Irish Sun 'A jaw-dropping story ... brilliant' Irish Times 'Essential reading' Irish Daily Star 'Astonishing ... Side-splittingly hilarious' Guardian 'A damning account' Sunday Independent 'An instant classic, one of the all-time great Irish sports books' Alan English 'Excellent ... includes staggering detail' Daily Mail 'A cracking read ... [An] incredible amount of jaw-dropping detail' Matt Cooper 'One of the most hotly-anticipated sport books of the year' Brendan O'Connor 'A masterpiece' Tommy Martin 'At last, the truth of his ruinous reign has been rigorously and painstakingly exposed' Irish Daily Mail 'An absolutely extraordinary book' Eoin McDevitt, Second Captains 'Remarkable. The desperate story of Irish football but also a book about how Ireland works. Outstanding' Dion Fanning




Internet Gaming Law


Book Description




Digital Leisure, the Internet and Popular Culture


Book Description

Spracklen explores the impact of the internet on leisure and leisure studies, examining the ways in which digital leisure spaces and activities have become part of everyday leisure. Covering a range of issues from social media and file-sharing to romance on the Internet, this book presents new theoretical directions for digital leisure.




Anagram Solver


Book Description

Anagram Solver is the essential guide to cracking all types of quiz and crossword featuring anagrams. Containing over 200,000 words and phrases, Anagram Solver includes plural noun forms, palindromes, idioms, first names and all parts of speech. Anagrams are grouped by the number of letters they contain with the letters set out in alphabetical order so that once the letters of an anagram are arranged alphabetically, finding the solution is as easy as locating the word in a dictionary.




101 Ielts Reading Past Papers with Answers


Book Description

As far as you know, IELTS candidates will have only 60 minutes for this IELTS Reading part with a total of 40questions. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that you invest time in practicing the real IELTS reading testsfor this module.Beside Cambridge IELTS Practice Tests series published by Oxford University Press, "101 IELTS Reading Past Papers with Answers" ebook aims to develop both test-taking skills and language proficiency to help youachieve a high IELTS Reading score. It contains 101 IELTS Reading Tests which were in the real IELTS testsfrom 2016 to early 2019 and an Answer Key. Each test contains three reading passages which cover a richvariety of topics and give a lots of practice for a wide range of question types used in the IELTS Exam suchas multiple choice questions, short-answer questions, sentence completion, summary completion, classification, matching lists / phrases, matching paragraph headings, identification of information -True/False/Not Given, etc. When studying IELTS with this ebook, you can evaluate at the nearest possibilityhow difficult the IELTS Reading section is in the real exam, and what the top most common traps are.Moreover, these tests are extracted from authentic IELTS bank source; therefore, you are in all probabilityto take these tests in your real examinations.The authors are convinced that you will find IELTS Reading Past Papers Test with Answer extremely helpful on yourpath to success with the International English Language Testing System.Don't just trust to luck in your IELTS exam - the key is practice!IELTSMaterial.COM




Magical Mystery Tours


Book Description

Tony Bramwell's remarkable life with The Beatles began in a post-war Liverpool suburb where he was childhood friends with John, Paul and George. By the time he unexpectedly ran into George Harrison on top of a bus, Tony was well into a life story absolutely unlike any other. At Apple Record's insistence, Tony stayed with The Beatles for every step of their meteoric rise. His story has been sought for over thirty years, and here it is, detailing with an insider's shrewd eye the incomparable success and inevitable failure of the Apple empire; Brian Epstein's frolics; Ken Kessy's Merry Pranksters; Phil Spector's eccentric behaviour; as well as never-heard-before stories about Yoko Ono. 'Magical Mystery Tours' reveals fresh insights that have never been published in any of the 800 plus books already on the market, including compelling details of the early recordings and songwriting and Yoko's pursuit of John and her growing influence over The Beatles' lives. From the first number one to the last and from scraps of song lyrics to the discovery of the famous Mr Kite circus poster, this is a broad ranging account of the swinging sixties and the decade's most successful rock band.