Features

In 2020 IQONIQ vowed “to become the Number One Fan Engagement Platform for the Sport and Entertainment Industry within the next 3 – 5 years” and signed deals with multiple football clubs. Then they disappeared.

How to make money on your reserves of liquidity when you are a not-for-profit organisation and operate in a country where the interest rates are negative? The answer, for Fifa, is to start banking.

Did you place a bet over the Christmas period? You certainly wouldn’t be alone. Betting on sports is big business, and the FA Premier League is globally recognised as football’s most commercially successful league. And online sports betting is a regulated, legal activity in the UK.

Yabo Sports was about to conquer the world of football, before disappearing almost as soon as they had arrived. And the man posing on the deals done with Manchester United, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain was not the CEO of Yabo Sports, but a male model.

In November two NRK journalists in Qatar were arrested for trespassing. But was that a diversion to hide the real reason: to prevent the publication of an interview NRK did with Head of Qatar 2022’s Supreme Committee Hassan Al-Thawadi about Abdullah Ibhais just prior to their arrest?

Three times Uefa has rejected a submission to investigate state interference in Belarusian football, neglecting evidence of human rights abuse, threats, torture and political appointment of officials.

The hunger striking whistleblower Abdullah Ibhais has been denied salt by his prison guards. Meanwhile the Supreme Committee has asked his lawyer to step down and, if not, warning him that representing Ibhais will damage his career.

The links between Premier League clubs and mysterious Asian e-Gambling platforms keeps getting stronger. Everton recently announced i8.BET as the club’s new Asian betting partner. But who they are, what they actually do, no-one knows, aside from a handful of individuals who are neither seen, heard or scrutinised.

Abdullah Ibhais has gone on a hunger strike. His family has issued a statement calling on Fifa to put pressure on Qatar authorities for a just trial and his immediate release.

On the morning of Sunday 7 November 2021 Josimar received a letter from the Norwegian law firm Simonsen Vogt Wiig representing the Qatar 2022 organising committee (The Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy) claiming our article “The trial of Abdullah Ibhais” was defamatory in nature and in violation of several laws.