About Us

With over 40 years of expertise in the wagering industry, Mark Read is recognized as Australia’s foremost bookmaker, punter and form analyst. Mark is regarded as a wagering legend, having successfully started and developed numerous organizations as well as developing extensive intellectual property assets in the global wagering industry

Mark Read is the true trailblazer of Australian bookmaking. At the turn of this Century, he focused on the massive, emerging Asian market introducing Australian and Asian punters to fixed odds betting on all Hong Kong and Singapore racing. In addition using his Asian network he penetrated the Asian- handicap soccer market. Within 3 years he was personally heading a trading team with AU$600m annual turnover. After selling Australia’s first and biggest corporate bookmaker, International All Sports (IAS), to Paddy Power PLC in 2010, Mark’s hobby has been HK racing.

Mark Read, trading as Darwin All Sports, was the third bookmaker in the world and the first in Australia/Asia to introduce internet betting; ready in time for the 1998 World Cup in France. It took 5 years for banking support systems that we take for granted now to catch up. Then WHOOSH! A true watershed moment in bookmaking.

Mark Read explains his entry into Sports Betting Hedge Fund Management. “After four years out of bookmaking, I did not like what I saw bookmaking becoming – it was not the Australian way. Taxes kept going up followed by betting margins which doubled to maintain profitability. Worse was to come – in the pursuit of super profits ,the minority class of winners were culled as in a form of ethnic cleansing that progressively got deeper into ‘uncommercial losers’.

“The evolution of bookmaking Australian Style as I practiced was always as a market maker and broker. A winning client was an asset more valuable than an unsustainable loser. His intellectual capital enhanced my margin and potential turnover with the option to follow the lead as long as I could access liquidity. So it is with my fund members – scale provides potential economies not available to the sole trader. Business in the 21st Century is all about scale.

Sports Betting Hedge Fund Management will become a major sector in wagering –it is the natural progression for real bookmakers in the 21st Century to access global liquidity”.