SBOBET

Controversy

In October 2008, SBOBet was asked to turn over any evidence they might have on the possible match fixing scandal in The Football Association (FA) championship between Norwich City and Derby County. SBOBet denied the FA's request, deeming it was "excessive" and would be a breach of customer privacy. Derby County won the game 2–1. In the end, the FA found no evidence that match fixing had taken place.

On 24 September 2009, two Bulgarian news agencies Novinite.com and 24 Chasa Daily published articles that wrongly suggested that SBOBet was responsible for fixing the football match between Levski and CSKA Sofia. The two agencies subsequently published correction articles, stating that SBOBet was not involved in any match-fixing scams, and apologized to SBOBet for publishing the untrue information.

In October 2009, representatives of the Premier League criticised SBOBet for offering live betting on academy football games, maintaining that children and youth activities should not be exposed by international gambling organisations. The bookmaker subsequently suspended betting on academy games and expressed its intention to seek clarification from the Premier League and the Professional Footballers' Association about which football markets it should be allowed to offer.

In October 2014, Singapore Parliament passed the Remote Gambling Bill to ban the entire spectrum of remote gambling, including internet, telephone, interactive television, radio and any other communication technology. The bill was effective to individual gamblers, facilitators, runners and operators. Although the new law came into operation from 2 February 2015, SBOBet stated that it had a policy not to take bets from countries where making or accepting bets is illegal but the overwhelming majority of its customers come from mainland China where betting is illegal and betting customers often face arrest. New accounts from Singapore IP address were hence not accepted and there is no Singapore in the drop-down list in the sign-up page, though these can be easily by-passed through the use of a VPN. All accounts were closed from 1 February 2015, complying with the law. With effect from 12 February 2015, access to SBOBet is blocked.