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Censorship, Cost Effective Bookies, Do-it-Yourself Banking

Case in point: A columnist for the Naples (FL) Daily News received a copy of Phil Steele's College Football Preview recently and was taken aback when he discovered the magazine "is a bettors' guide to college football". The writer found this a little "weird". "Isn't sports gambling illegal except in Las Vegas?" he wondered.

With such incisive comments as that, the writer, Will Graves, must have spent his adult life in another galaxy or a hermetically sealed bubble. Nonetheless, receipt of that publication shattered his innocence, and inspired him to write one of the weakest anti-gaming treatises you'll ever see (Friday, July 19th): Naples News.

Graves notes that his alma mater, West Virginia, went 3-8 last year but he is surprised to discover that, according to Phil Steele, the Mountaineers were 4-7 ATS. Now it is no big deal for a non-gambler not to know that ATS means against the spread. But Graves seems to find the concept offensive.

This bozo then poses the question, "Isn't betting on college sports supposed to be wrong?" He might just as well have asked, "Isn't ending a sentence with a preposition supposed to be wrong?"

Graves makes the brilliant observation that a former player for the University of Florida who admitted he bet on college sports, "has been hung out to dry."

Earth to Will Graves: pro or amateur, it is illegal for athletes to bet on the sport in which they compete. Those who do so and are caught, suffer the consequences.

Continuing the sophomoric logic that is consistent throughout his column, Graves says of the player, "Maybe he bet on the Gators, maybe he didn't. It doesn't matter now."

Actually, it does matter. He admitted betting and is now paying the price. Graves weeps crocodile tears, noting, "He'll always be followed by his ignominious exodus from Gainesville."

The utter fatuousness of this one-dimensional and intellectually challenged article comes to a roaring crescendo with Graves' final proposal. "If the NCAA wants to get serious about curbing sports gambling … stronger measures should be taken, starting with banning magazines like Phil Steele's."

Old Will better be careful what he wishes for; he just might get it. Before Phil Steele gets banned, writers guilty of spewing inane gibberish might be among the first to go.

Essentially, this dim-witted suggestion for a "crusade to protect the integrity of collegiate sports" is no more than the wet dream of an inept, agenda-driven anti-gaming zealot.

Phil Steele, Marc Lawrence and Jim Feist are just a few of the leading publishers whose magazines focus on the betting aspects of college football. There is a multitude of others out there on the newsstands, because there is a multitude of readers.

While demand for a product doesn't give it automatic legitimacy, we live in a nation that tries to practice free enterprise. Moreover, we take freedom of speech very seriously in this country. Suggesting that ideas with which one disagrees should be banned is called Nazism, fascism or totalitarianism.

If Graves or anyone else is sympathetic with those isms, we suggest they take a long, hard look at the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights.

BOTTOM LINE BOOKMAKERS.

If there were any doubt that sportsbook owners are becoming more aggressive in trying to run their shops with hard attention to the bottom line, latest news from Costa Rica suggests that the current mantra of local bookmakers is "cost effectiveness".

According to Max, from Call Center Solutions (www.bookoffshore.com), the company is attracting not only bookmakers from the U.S., but a growing number of existing post-up shops as well.

"We're starting to see more business come over from post-up companies, particularly turnkey operations which lack a call center," he observed.

Call Center Solutions services post-up or credit players for about $30 per week. It has been handling over 3,000 customers from stateside and offshore accounts during the off season.

Now there is a rush of new business, says Max, noting that prospects he spoke with several weeks ago are pulling the trigger and signing up.

"We're getting a lot of interest from people without a call center, but who have a big nut. This is not the way we anticipated the business would go, but we have the capacity to service whatever clients need," he added.

We wondered what the biggest factor in driving business to CCS is.

Cost and reliability head the list. "It is incredibly cost-effective to use our resources," Max asserted. "And, with two satellites in widely disparate geographic locations, we have total redundancy. With all the down time suffered by companies with servers in Costa Rica, that is very attractive," he noted.

Max urged anyone who wants to be up and running for football to make arrangements as soon as possible. "Don't wait until the last minute. There is no cost to the book until its players are in action," he said.

TRUMPING NERVOUS NELLY CC PROCESSORS.

The squeamishness of VISA and MasterCard in regards to servicing offshore gaming, and the projected loss of PayPal as it is absorbed by Ebay notwithstanding, shed no tears for offshore sportsbooks and casinos as they bid farewell to the usual suspects and embrace a new set of funds transfer vendors.

The online gaming industry's promise to be a lucrative source of business for organizations which handle financial processing, gives new meaning to the old chestnut about a new door opening every time another door is shut.

The hypocrisy of American banks is truly despicable. Anyone notice how the suits at Citibank spouted pious rhetoric about morality as they announced they would no longer process transactions related to gambling? Meanwhile, Citibank's complicity with Enron in scamming investors shows these bankers are quite good at talking out of both sides of their mouths.

In the wake of abdications from this industry, several vendors with debit card packages are soliciting business from Caribbean and Central America-based gaming companies. One that seems further along than many is YourTeller.com, which successfully beta tested with Casablanca Sports (BetCBS.com) and launched its product in July.

We spoke with CEO Rob Newson who told us the financial institution servicing YourTeller accounts is located in Beirut, Lebanon. When we voiced some concerns about the security of that location, Newson quickly noted that CreditCard Services s.a.l., along with a sister institution, last year processed more than seven million transactions valued in excess of $350 million.

"Bank secrecy laws in Lebanon are comparable with those in Switzerland, and clients are assured the utmost in security and privacy, with no information being divulged to any party but the account holder," he advised.

YourTeller is presented as a solution to problems facing both Internet bettors and casinos, and will be marketed to consumers through the gaming companies. "Target market includes merchants with repetitive sales to the same client, and merchants with high chargebacks from issuing banks that charge back because of the nature of the merchant's business rather than investigate the validity of the chargeback," said Newson.

Bettors will benefit immediately by taking charge of their own funds, and not being at the mercy of coding restrictions, which can block where they spend their money. They will have access to funds at ATMs and retail outlets where PayPal and NeTeller are not accepted, he explained.

Essentially, bettors will be able to handle all their financial transactions from a single debit account, which will be their own bank account, rather than part of a large bank account of the processing company.

Newson suggested that offshore players should ask their sportsbooks about having YourTeller available as a funds transfer option. "They can visit our site, www.YourTeller.com, and see for themselves how easy and user-friendly our system is."

To cover the somewhat complex subject accurately, we conducted a brief Q&A with Newson.

How long has YourTeller been in development?

The product began development just over one year ago. We beta tested with Casablanca sports from Costa Rica during May and June of this year and launched the product in July.

The YourTeller solution seems custom made for casinos and sportsbooks.

The original intention was to develop a true international debit card program with very high-end Internet functionality. The fact that it also solves the problems facing the Internet gaming industry was not envisioned at the time but we are very pleased that it does so in such a complete manner.

Merchants can view transactions in real time; they have access to an incredible data warehousing function that allows them to carry out reconciliation's, transaction reports by site and all manner of other electronic reporting. The solution is truly "feature rich."

Cardholders can access their accounts over the Internet 24/7 and credits from merchants are virtually instantaneous.

We have seen some other alternative solutions dry up in the past 12 months. How can YourTeller avoid the same fate?

Historically MasterCard and VISA have disliked any type of disguising of a transaction's true nature, and so many of the supposed solutions offered out there tried to do exactly that. When you turn a credit card transaction into any form of quasi cash or e-cash, as it might be known, neither the issuer of the card or the acquirer of the transaction know its true nature. If they don't know the nature of the transaction then obviously they cannot know the risk attached to that transaction. The YourTeller solution does not look to disguise the transaction in any manner.

There has been some concern about the use of credit cards in connection with Internet gaming. How do you alleviate that concern?

There are three major issues here that must be addressed: disguising the nature of the transaction as discussed earlier, chargeback concerns, and bad publicity due to addiction. The YourTeller solution will virtually eliminate chargebacks and protect the cardholder against addiction due to the way we handle these transactions.

Explain exactly how the solution works and how it solves the problems.

In a gaming transaction, the individual is directed to the YourTeller site from the gaming site where YourTeller is a payment option. They are then invited to apply for a YourTeller account. This requires them to complete an online application and provide us some limited backup documentation after which their account is opened within 24 hours and they are provided their MasterCard debit card number, expiration date, account details, PIN and CVC2 code.

The account holder can then fund their account by credit card, wire, Western Union or any other method used in normal banking. This gives the cardholder is a cooling off period so he can't go online with us and start doing things he might later regret.

From the merchants' point of view, the amount of detail we collect makes it virtually impossible for a cardholder to chargeback the transaction based on them not understanding what they were doing. Of course, if the merchant fails to pay a cardholder or is obviously at fault then any customer can legitimately initiate a dispute or chargeback a transaction but we are going to fight it if the merchant was not at fault.

Lastly, because any funding of the account is done by a cash advance on a credit card and issuers typically limit this expenditure to a percentage of the total card limit we will not be a party to someone using their maximum limit to gamble. We also have additional controls in-place that regulate a cardholders funding frequency.

So how do you see the future for YourTeller?

We have processed high-risk Internet transactions for many years and this gave us a very good view on the different types of merchant and their thinking. We know that in any industry there are those professional merchants who want to conduct good business in the long term and are tired of having to change payment-processing solutions every 6-12 months. Those professional businesses will welcome YourTeller and will remain clients for the long term. Those less professional merchants who look to abuse the system or fail to protect their clients (sometimes against themselves) will continue to move from one lame solution to another and will ultimately fail. We only want to deal with professional organizations that demand complete, well thought out solutions that stand the test of time. We have that solution.

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