Cash-cow IPL: Bookies lure bankers with high margin small bets

High margins and the chance to bet small have gotten typical office managers and other white-collar professionals hooked onto betting on IPL 6, with the total cricket illegal betting operation likely to hit Rs 40,000 crore this year, up25 percent from last year.

The jump in the turnover comes despite several bookies being arrested in the last month for gambling on IPL matches.

According to a report in The Economic Time _s_, the betting amount has jumped from Rs 6,000 crore in IPL-1 to Rs 40,000 crore in this IPL, with Hyderabad being the punters capital as more than 20 percent of the bets are generated there, followed by Gujarat and Rajasthan.

And apart from cross-country bets, it is the investment bankers and other professionals that are aiding this black market for “if you win, you win big”.

“The big volumes are still from the big players - bets of lakhs are common among these punters - but the jump in total turnover is thanks to the participation of the typical office manager type,” the report said quoting several bookies.

The ET report says this year, Mumbai Indians, Royal Challengers and Kolkata Knight Riders are the top favourites for punters, since lower the odds implies higher chances of victory.

While cricket betting is illegal in India, a report in the Telegraph points that bookies operate via local loop phones, which are code named as Dabba and are provided to the bookies by several operational centres. Each bookie has at least a dozen phones and the punter (the one who places the bet) the bookie, the command centre and the operational centres are all connected through WLL phones.

Also, each operational centre is led by the boss (codenamed daddy) who takes care of all the monetary transactions which are all made in cash.

“The first 10 overs of an IPL innings are coded as “sessions”. After the “session” is over, bets are offered on each delivery. The duration of a “session” is reduced to the first five overs in semi-finals and the final. The punter who wins six bets back to back is offered 20 percent over and above the winning amount,” the _Telegraph p_ointed out.

Several major bookies have started operating from remote bungalows in Lonavla, Goa and Gujarat fearing a tip-off by the smaller fries. In fact, many operate online, through own websites and closed communities on social networking sites.