Thread by @uglygame

After Wolves yesterday, that's two Premier League clubs in two days signing up with illegal Vietnamese gambling firms.

With previous illegal betting firms having been caught out using made up staff, Wolves' partner used a freelance British PR consultant to give a quote. NET88, by contrast, seem not to have any named employees.

As Josimar have documented time after time, these are not legitimate companies. Their services are by definition illegal. They are often connected to organised crime and horrendous human rights abuses.

These firms often pirate sports broadcasts and, as Norwich found out a few years back and Palace are finding out now, advertise their wares with overtly sexual imagery.
(Via @SpiritofEverton)

Imagine if your football team was sponsored by a cigarette company and, when you objected, they said, "don't worry, they don't sell cigarettes in the UK. They only sell them abroad, in countries where they are illegal." That's the nature of these deals, how tainted the money is.

What legitimate sponsor has a social channel that posted for the *first time* in the last hour? What legitimate sponsor's home-nation profile claims to the business is four years old yet has 0 followers?

This is simply not a normal, well-established, global business. My challenge for Palace would be: are you able to publicly name the owner(s) and senior staff of your newest commercial partner. And if not, why not?

The reason I ask is because there is one Net88 website that claims a 24yo women called Minh Chau is the founder of what it describes as "Asia's No. 1 bookmaker." I cannot immediately find any online confirmation of this. Presumably Palace met her when they signed the deal?

Congratulations to Crystal Palace's commercial team who signed a deal with an illegal Vietnamese betting firm whose founder "Phạm Minh Châu" bears a striking resemblance to a Vietnamese TikToker called "Đặng Ngọc Bích Tuyền" who passed away in 2023.

Should say, of course, that this is only the product of thirty minutes' googling. Palace, no doubt, will have done much more due diligence than this. There may well be a perfectly good explanation for it all.

PS: If you found this a frustrating and bizarre move by Palace, you might like my newest book, which is full of exactly these kind of tie ups.

It's called "No Questions Asked: How football joined the crypto con" and it's available here: amzn.eu/d/07NgtcM

If you prefer to try before you buy, you can read the first chapter here.
theuglygame.wordpress.com/2023/12/29/cha…

Good question, here: why does there seem to be a UK firm with the same name, but no website and no UK services but an identically named set of websites serving the Asian market (where gambling is illegal)? Could they be two different firms?

My expectation is that this will be a notionally UK-licenced firm, with a white label gambling licence in the Isle of Man, but which will provide no services in the UK, while the promotional material is directed at punters in the Asian market. It's a well-established set-up.

A UK trademark for Net88 was applied for in March 2024 and granted last week. Note that logo matches the logo used across South East Asia.

The Net88 UK website () which is currently down was bought eight days ago. This, again, does not speak to a well-established global firm. net-88.co.uk

To those who noted the similiarities between Wolves' deal with Debet and this deal with 88Net, congratulations...

The UK trademark for Net88 is owned by two companies, IPS Law, a UK company, and PL Consultancy, a Maltese company. Both those firms own a second trademark...

The applications for the Debet and Net88 trademarks were filed on the same day - 13 March 2024. If Debet and Net88 are not closely connected Asian-facing bookmakers, it is an extraordinary coincidence.

To those wondering about the Net88 UK holding website, have a look as the UK website of Forest's sponsor, Kaiyun, which is another illegal Asian bookie. The Kaiyun page is today as it was when the deal was announced 10 months ago. They never go live in the UK.

Oh, and here is another Vietnamese Net88 site, this time using today's Palace branding (middle top) but also the other Net88 branding (in the tab icon, top left). They are the same company.

In summary: Crystal Palace signed a shirt deal with an illegal Vietnamese betting firm which has no online presence, is closely linked to Wolves' new sponsor, has a fake CEO using the identity of a dead TikToker. Oh, and they offer bets on cockfighting. (Via @WarrenAJB)

The great @PhilippeAuclair confirms not merely that Wolves' Debet and Palace's Net88 are closely related but, in fact, that they are simply different tentacles of the same octopus.

Thanks to the many people who have pointed out that IPS Law, the law firm who registered the Debet and Net88 trademarks, is run by Chris Farnell, a man who is not unknown to fans of a number of football clubs, chiefly Charlton.
thecharltondossier.com/chris-farnell/

Palace's front-of-shirt sponsor has denied any connection to other betting firms called Net88 *and* denied it has ever offered betting on cockfighting. And yet, oddly, as they are unconnected, the cockfighting option has vanished overnight. (See website nav yesterday and today.)

If it were the case that the companies were genuinely unconnected, one can only wonder at the coincidence of this unconnected third party choosing to delete cockfighting from the navigation right at the moment it was causing Net88 such embarrassment.

Needless to say, the Net88 statement doesn't address the substantial amount of evidence that it is an illegal Asian-facing betting firm operating as part of the broader Debet group.

If, as Net88 claim, other unconnected bookies are trading on their name, I wonder how it was that this Net88 site was using the new logo on 15th May 2024, three weeks before Palace's Net88 even bought their website address. How did they steal IP not yet in the public domain?