Thousands of amateur sports events attracted bets and streamed live to one of the globe’s most controversial bookmakers. The locations of the games were unknown. Bellingcat has geolocated the sites of these matches in three different countries.
The young men changed uniforms off-screen. Afterwards, they reappear, representing different teams and doing it all over again. The scene is copied on the other side of the sport hall’s divider curtains. Barcelona beats Man City, Chelsea loses to Tottenham.
The goalkeeper for Amsterdam walks into an adjacent game to recover his stray ball in the final minutes of a 4:30 am match. The schedule is persistent. Players compete in back-to-back football matches that run day and night.
The games have one thing in common. They are all live-streamed to the website of 1xBet. It is a bookmaker based in Cyprus, licensed in the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao.
Organizers never disclose the locations of the games streamed to 1xBet. However, Bellingcat has identified sports venues across Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus that host these amateur tournaments. This investigation has also found that the gaming operation allowed gamblers to gamble on a game which children as young as 14 were competing.
Numerous countries have blacklisted 1xBet. It is a controversial name in gambling. Yet, it remains as one of the largest online casinos in the world, with a reported turnover of billions of dollars.
Russian authorities issues an international arrest warrant for its three founders in 2020. They are Dmitry Kazorin, Roman Semiokhin, and Sergey Karshkov. According to investigators in 2021, the company made more than 63 billion rubles or 655 million US dollars in illegal gambling activities.
1xBet cannot operate in Russia. It has also been suspended in the United Kingdom and is facing a criminal complaint in Morocco.
