POLITICS

AUTHOR: davidstewart

BETTING ODDITIES: Prime Time For Tennis

Not after-timing here as I did say BEFORE Saturday’s US Open Final how sensible it was for Channel 4 and Amazon Prime to do a deal to allow it to be broadcast live on terrestrial. It turned out to be one of those deals where ‘everyone’s a winner’. The rights holders Amazon Prime got huge additional branding via Channel 4 who were rewarded themselves with a peak audience of 9.2 million of which a massive 48% were in the 16-34 age bracket which has got to be a long term positive for the sport.

Amazon Prime also saw record streaming numbers and the £1 million that purportedly exchanged hands has gone straight into grassroots women’s tennis in the UK.

Winners all round both on and off court. There were a few technical issues in the final though. Not least of which every single service sounded like it was hitting the net cord.

The absence of line judges will also take some getting used to.  They’ve been replaced by computer technology with a human robot voice. This also means the players can no longer challenge.

No more flare ups between players and line judges then. Djokovic still found a way of venting his anger on Sunday though. Not sure he’ll be appealing the warning after this somehow …..

GREAT SCOTT ON THE TOON

Emma Raducanu quite rightly grabbed the weekend sporting headlines but there was one performance that didn’t quite get the deserved plaudits.

Step forward Great Britain’s Marc Scott who won the 40th running of the Great North Run in Newcastle. A local lad from Northallerton, Scott saw off the challenge of Kenya’s Ed Cheserek by nine seconds over the re-designed course which avoided a mass finish in South Shields.

IT’S IN THE BAG

Waitrose have made a move to replace all their current ‘bags for life’ (costing 10p) with a new version that costs 50p and is twice as durable but also fully recyclable.

It surely won’t be long before the other supermarkets follow? The Waitrose move alone will remove 40 million single-use bags which continue to blight the planet.

I’ve always thought the 10p level wasn’t a high enough threshold to make people change habits of a lifetime and Waitrose’s own research found that the 10p bags were increasingly being used only once and not multiple times as intended.

Make them £10 each and see how quickly people suddenly remember to bring their bags or find alternative ways of transporting shopping.

THE BAD APPLE

It’s not often Apple make any mistakes so it seems worthy of an Oddities mention when they do.

I signed up yesterday to be reminded of today’s Apple Event to get an auto-response on twitter saying the event was ‘just a week away’ rather than actually 24 hours away!

Relatively minor in the scheme of things but when you are a $2.25 trillion company detail is important.

… and if they want to spend any of those trillions on ‘editorial services’ they know where I am!

David

DAVID STEWART is a freelance digital betting producer and journalist. His CV includes: The Sun, The Sporting Life, Racing Post, At The Races, The Sportsman, lead feature writer for Sky’s Betview magazine and senior producer Timeform Radio.

Views of authors do not necessarily represent views of Star Sports Bookmakers.

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