Exclusive Interview with Armen Ghazaryan of Fairsportbet

Our new content editor colleague, Szaló Réka has managed to catch up with Mr. Ghazaryan developer of the Fairsportbet.com website.

First of all I would like to ask you to introduce yourself, tell us a bit about yourself. How did you venture in this industry? 

Armen: I live in Yerevan, I’m mathematician by my major. It has already been years that I’m working in the sphere of bookmaking. In 2006, when the bookmaking agencies were just developing in Armenia, I started collaboration with local bookmaking companies on franchise basis. During the time, my interest grew on the field and international bookmakers and I started working with nearly all the well-known bookmakers on affiliate basis. During the working process we had discrepancies between the Clients and the Bookmakers that we were trying to solve. Recently, we’ve faced discrepancies among the latter’s on fixed matches which gave me the idea to develop the website www.fairsportbet.com. 

Fairsportbet, as its name indicates, struggles for fair sport, and its aim is to reveal fixed matches. Please, tell us more about this website. Who do you want to reach, how does this all work?

Armen: Yes, the name of the website reveals its activity – struggle against fixed matches. The working scheme of the website is rather simple. It’s founded on the voting basis. The bookmakers that have joined us and have doubts on any match, simply add the match in our website and the rest of the bookmakers vote based on the bids of the
match they have. In the result we reveal the fact of the fixed matches during a couple of minutes. 

What were your expectations when you launched this website and what is your opinion about its present functioning?

Armen: The main target is to have fair sport and I think we can reach this only via mutual struggle. The website is currently rather functional and has all the possibilities to satisfy the need of the Customers. I’d like to state the website is designed for bookmakers only and the letter can join us after we check all the details. 

What are the feedback’s from the bookmakers who started using this website? Do you find these comments, suggestions useful?

Armen: It’s been 2 weeks that we have started working and we get only positive feedback that we are happy with. Many bookmakers offer their support on the website in nearly all the issues. 

Would like to share some figures with us regarding the users, reported cases of suspicious betting, sports which had the highest number of alerts, etc?

Armen: During the 2 weeks’ period we have discussed more than 50 fixed matches, the 70% of which were fixed according to the opinion of the bookmakers that have joined us. This is the disappointing statistics that we have, as there are a lot of fixed matches. We had matches that had voting from all the bookmakers. What’s that? Of course, arranged/fixed match. We have fixed matches mostly in tennis and it’s a bit difficult to reveal them as it happens in seconds. e.g of the set of the game. The case in football is different. Here the bookmakers have time to reveal fixed matches and cancel/close the match in their company. 

Which has been the most successful experience since you launched this website?

Armen: The most pleasant thing is that our website can really struggle against fixed matches and the project we have worked on several months gives its results. We have not received any negative feedback from bookmakers to join our website. 

Tell us please about your future plans regarding Fairsportbet.

Armen: We have a lot of plans, to be more professional day by day, work on the website and improve it daily for our Customers. Cooperate with as many bookmakers as possible, correspondingly paying too much attention on the quality.

What do you think about the impact your website will have on the European gambling market?

Armen: Currently we have bookmakers from Europe that have joined.

Do you know about similar initiatives? 

Armen: As far as I’m informed our website is the first in the world. There are many other projects designed to struggle against the fixed matches, but they operate only after the match has finished. The difference of our website is that we reveal fixed matches before they start or during the live broadcast.

If you could change anything in the world of online betting what would that be?

Armen: If I have the possibility I’d like the bets to be made only for pleasure. 

Who is your favourite actor or actress?

Armen: That person is Morgan Freeman that you can learn from all the time.

Where would you travel the most in Central Europe?

Armen: I travel a lot to European countries, most commonly in the cities that the bookmaking conferences take place.

Which are those places in Central Europe that you are not interested in, and you would not like to visit them?

Armen: There is no such city that I’m not interested to visit and not only in Europe but in the whole World. I think traveling makes the human being happy.