England football manager cuts ties with online gambling firm

England football manager Sam Allardyce (61) is taking no chances with his personal reputation, it appears following news that he has quit as brand ambassador to My Club Betting, an online football betting company, and is to return shares awarded to him.

The Mirror newspaper in the UK reported Monday that Allardyce acted after being approached by The Sun newspaper, which revealed the results of its investigation into businessman Neil Riches (57) who runs My Club Betting.

The investigation showed that Riches was the man behind a similar scheme titled Worldlink which went into liquidation in 2012 with investor losses of GBP 4.3 million.

When the company launched on the London Stock Exchange in November 2011 the it was valued at GBP 55million, but within six weeks shares had plummeted from 112.5p to just 15p.

The investigation showed that as Worldlink was tanking, Riches paid himself a GBP 1,076,485 bonus on top of his GBP 223,500 salary.

Allardyce confirmed that in return for his promotional services he had received shares in Riches’ new My Club Betting venture – but no payments.

“In view of the revelations about Worldlink I cannot continue to promote the My Club Betting site and I will be giving up my shares,” Allardyce said.

Riches claims that all investors in the (failed) Worldlink venture have been given shares in My Club Betting.

“Some may not know this, but we have tried to contact them all,” Riches claimed. “We encourage all people that own Worldlink shares to contact us to enable that they receive their shares in My Club Betting.”

The My Club Betting scheme offers amateur sports clubs a customised online betting website and they receive a fifth of profits.

Riches claims he is to launch the company on Europe’s Nasdaq (First North) stock exchange at a GBP 10 share price with a value of GBP 75million.

But disgruntled Worldlink creditors told The Sun that they have urged others not to put money into the new venture.