Intertops might have lost the first ever online sports bet, but making history was a reasonable consolation prize.
It was 1994, and Ian Sherrington had started experimenting with early internet protocols. ��I was fascinated by networking and the open approach the internet offered. I started developing interactive chat ��apps�� which used Telnet, a basic teletype interface. The internet wasn��t mainstream until HTML came out and the browser emerged, but I could see where it was going.�� he says. ��It just made sense that betting would move online too.��
At that point, nobody else was doing it. There were a few clunky attempts, but nothing truly online. So, naturally, Ian built the whole system himself. When he eventually got it up and running, the Intertops system was one of the first web servers to use a database and web pages together.
On 17 January 1996, a Finnish customer placed the first ever online sports bet on Tottenham Hotspur to beat Hereford United. The bet went through, Intertops lost and paid out.
��At the time nobody trusted the internet so we were convinced we were going to be hacked. We printed out every single bet on a dot matrix printer just to have hard copies, so when the first online bet was placed, you could actually hear it. The matrix printer would go screeching off. So that was all quite exciting.��
Scaling up in the sun
As Intertops scaled, so did its ambitions. ��We got spotted by these Canadian lawyers who told Detlef they could take the company to the next level,�� Ian says,
That level turned out to be Antigua.
Austria had granted them a sportsbook licence, but an online 바카라 was out of the question. Antigua, on the other hand, was offering licences, an economic free zone, decent banking access, and perhaps most crucially, the freedom to get on with things.
��So with an office magically installed by Simon Noble, our chief out there, and office manager Ben Dalfen, we set up shop. We were the first ones to integrate a Microgaming 바카라 into a sportsbook, as far as I know,�� Ian says. ��And oddly enough, the 바카라 did way more business than the sports which, frankly, we weren��t expecting.��
In those days it was a download 바카라; you would use your account, username and password to access the games which you would download in order to play.
��They loved us, Microgaming. We loved them too. They even made a game just for us, which was our own design, our own slot machine.��
The Antiguan chapter was sun-drenched and full of contrast. ��I would go out there for a few weeks at a time. Obviously it was a great place to be. I mean, it was open all night, you know, I made a lot of friends. But there were also T1 lines to install, eight telephone clerks to manage, and a near-constant battle with hardware.
��We��d bought all these top-of-the-line Compaq servers,�� Ian says. ��Except we later found out Compaq��s global support guarantee applied everywhere in the world �� except Antigua.��
��One server in particular began randomly switching itself off, crashing the database along with it. So I swapped out some spare bits, called Compaq numerous times. Swore. Changed out everything in the entire server. Still it failed, it was a complete mystery. ��Simon eventually said: ��It makes no sense, I mean, you��ve literally changed everything except the power plug.��
��And, well, that was it. It was just the bloody plug. That was a learning curve.��
Now, we fly
By the late 90s, the online sportsbook world was filling up. New players were emerging, some fast, some shady. But Intertops had first-mover advantage, a working product, and a reputation for actually paying out.
They launched new versions of the site, added multilingual support, and expanded into 바카라 and poker. They experimented with CD-ROM betting clients. They dodged the thousands of pitfalls that came with building something there were no rules for.
And through it all, Ian Sherrington stayed behind the curtain, building, fixing, improving.
Today, the online betting industry is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The idea of placing a sports bet without a smartphone is unimaginable. Companies that didn��t even exist in 1996 now dominate the market.
But the first bet? That happened on Ian��s system. On a website he built. For a customer he never met.
Legacy isn��t about being loud
��We weren��t doing it to sell it off,�� he says. ��We were just doing it. Detlef did well out of it, sure. But it wasn��t about the exit, it was about solving the problems. We weren��t trying to be first, either. It just turned out that way.��
Perhaps that��s the thing that sets Ian apart. He never chased the spotlight. He never called himself a founder or a disruptor. He just quietly helped invent online sports betting, then went back to debugging the next thing.
In an industry full of hype and self-congratulation, Ian Sherrington did it all before anyone thought it was possible, and he did it without a single Ted Talk. No victory lap. Just a slow, deliberate, perfectly timed revolution.
It��s been a while since a fresh-faced Ian was soldering wires onto a doorbell-powered Wheel of Fortune at that 1970s church f��te, but the principle remains more or less the same: build something, see if it works, and try not to set anything on fire.?
Oh, and if a random German ever offers you a cigarette, take it. You never know where it might lead.
