A recent Bellingcat investigation revealed that a controversial Russian-founded gambling platform takes bets on thousands of amateur sports events that are live-streamed to its website from secret locations.

We examined hundreds of videos broadcast to 1xBet – an official partner of FC Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain FC – and geolocated six venues in three countries. They included a children’s football school in Russia, a basketball arena in Belarus, and a sports hall in Ukraine’s capital city.

But we only scratched the surface and the locations of many other sports venues remained unknown. We enlisted the help of Bellingcat’s Discord community to shed further light on the scale of the amateur bookmaker leagues. 

These volunteers geolocated more than 10 new sites which host football, basketball, ice hockey and cricket tournaments that are broadcast to 1xBet around the clock. We traced the leagues to Russia, Belarus and India. 

The venues either denied any connection to 1xBet or did not respond to questions from Bellingcat. 1xBet has not replied to repeated requests for comment, though it did issue a statement through Sigma, a Cyprus-based gambling and events firm that gave the bookmaker an award for ‘Best Mobile Sports Betting App 2024’ last week.

In comments attributed to its spokesman “Alex Sommers”, 1xBet told Sigma that it complies with all applicable laws and regulations in countries where it operates and requests the removal of streams provided by third parties that are found to be noncompliant. The statement said betting on amateur sports “is not illegal” and that “many global bookmakers offer this to customers”. 1xBet also said it had written “to all of our streaming providers reminding them of their obligations to filter videos and ensure those hosting are in full compliance with copyright laws”.

Moscow Tent Soccer

MLS+ is a “short football” league where teams of up to five players compete. Branding suggests it was modeled after Major League Soccer in the US, with teams named after American cities. They face off in indoor venues, two of which appear to be in large tents or air domes.

Discord user Rory White geolocated the first venue through a reverse image search on Yandex, which led to a YouTube channel containing footage from the venue. From there, Rory discovered the name of a sports facility in Moscow, and a search on Yandex Maps confirmed the venue was the Football Arena Nagatino.  

Matching details include the markings on the inside tent wall, the identical seam pattern and pitch layout. Entering the coordinates from Yandex into Google Maps shows satellite imagery of a large, rectangular tent.

A search of websites and social media profiles associated with the arena led to another MLS+ domed venue in Moscow, the Angelovo Football Arena. Matches live-streamed to 1xBet show the same pitch seen in photos on the venue’s VK profile and Yandex.

Minsk ‘Box’ Football

Inside what appears to be a warehouse, “Short Football D1” games take place in front of a large banner showing professional footballers including Germany’s Mario Götze and France’s Zinedine Zidane.

A member of Bellingcat’s Global Authentication Project (GAP) identified this venue through a reverse image search of the banner, which led to the social media profile of Box 365 Football Complex in Minsk. Box 365’s Instagram posts confirm these games are streamed from its “Betbox” venue in the northwest of the city.

Bryansk Leagues

Bryansk, where 1xBet’s three Russian founders are from, appears to be a key location for Short Football leagues. Our first investigation into the bookmaker found multiple short football games were streamed simultaneously from in and around a children’s football school in the city. Just a few kilometres away from that venue, the Titan Sports House hosts the “Urban Short Football Cup”.  

This venue was geolocated by GAP volunteer Thomas Bordeaux and Discord user Rory White, who found it by examining stream promotional footage and searching the keywords “volleyball” and “Bryansk”. Images from the venue’s social media posts confirm the location.

Just outside the Titan Sports House, an outdoor pitch set up in a car park hosts multiple 3×3 short football matches, which are live-streamed to 1xBet day and night.

Rory White suggested that the outdoor pitch could be in the vicinity of Titan Sports House in Bryansk. This was corroborated by Bellingcat’s Galen Reich, using our Shadow Finder tool, which highlighted an area consistent with western Russia. The tool shows a range of possible locations based on the time and date of the live-streams, and the measurements of objects and shadows visible in the footage.

Details visible in the live-stream, including a pylon and part of a blue-and-yellow wall, helped narrow down the search. Pylons could be seen in the area around the Titan Sports House, which has the same colour outer paneling.

Discord user Marjolein Kassenaar found an image of the pitch on the website of an unrelated adjacent business. The website featured a video tour of the outdoor area, which briefly showed the blue-and-yellow building opposite the outdoor pitch.

Basketball in Yaroslavl

In Yaroslavl, a city northeast of Moscow on the banks of the Volga River, Rocket League games are held in the Azart Sports Hall. This venue was located by Discord user Rory White, who found a document containing addresses of sports venues in an archived website for a Yaroslavl sports league. One of the addresses was for the Azart Sports Hall. Images posted on the sports hall’s VK profile match details visible in the 1xbet streams. 

Belgorod Ice Hockey

With little room for spectators, this “Sport Region” branded arena in the Russian city of Belgorod hosts four-a-side ice hockey games in the 3HL League.

This venue was located by Riccardo Giannardi and Thomas Bordeaux, who found matching imagery on the Belgorod Hockey League Telegram channel. One post included the address of the venue.

Satellite imagery of the location that was named in the Telegram post shows white cylindrical structures that tally with the appearance of the building.

3HL ice hockey games also take place in the M54 Arena in Moscow. This venue was discovered by Rory White, who searched for keywords in combination with “3HL”.

Imagery on Yandex and the venue’s website shows the same features visible in the 1xBet live-streams.

Yaroslavl Warehouse Cricket

The backdrop surrounding the cricket pitch in this venue, which shows epic mountain ranges, is a far cry from the Russian plains where these matches take place. Teams in the “Gold League 2” play cricket in an industrial warehouse in the city of Yaroslavl.

This location was found by Thomas Bordeaux, who, through a Google reverse image search identified a YouTube channel with videos from within the venue. While the YouTube channel lists its location as “Pakistan”, one video was filmed on a street in Yaroslavl with a view of the Voznesenskiye Barracks.

A reverse image search of the interior of the venue led to a rental listing in Yaroslavl, which said the property had “three halls that can be combined into one space”. Images on the real estate website match the 1xBet live-streams, including the same backdrop.

In another part of the same warehouse, games in the “Big Smash League Т10” are also live-streamed to 1xBet.

This playing area features on the same YouTube channel mentioned above. Comparing social media imagery of this cricket pitch to a photo from the venue’s real-estate listing, a similar ceiling structure, netting and lighting is visible.

Yekaterinburg Basketball

The IPBL is a basketball league that hosts multiple divisions in different regions in Russia. In addition to its “Space Division”, which, as discovered in our previous investigation, hosts games in Mordovia, “Pro Division” matches are streamed from the Drive Fitness gym in Yekaterinburg.

This venue was also found by Thomas Bordeaux and a second GAP member, who identified players in Yekaterinburg and searched Yandex for gyms in the city. The IPBL Pro Division court and branding is visible in footage on Yandex and in multiple photos on the gym’s VK profile.

Perm Basketball

The Match Arena in the Russian city of Perm hosts another IPBL iteration that’s live-streamed to 1xBet, the “Prime Division”.

A website linked by IP to the IPBL domain, visible in the 1xBet streams, included a document listing an address in Perm. Bellingcat volunteer Thomas Bordeaux and another GAP member used this information to find matching images on social media, including an Instagram video showing the venue’s name and logo.

An image included in an album on Match Arena’s VK profile shows what appears to be a basketball board in front of a banner and below a roof beam visible in the 1xBet live-streams.

Indian Cricket

While the venues discovered so far have been in Russia and Eastern Europe, other amateur bookmaker leagues are likely streamed from further afield. Cricket matches in the “India Women’s Indoor League T-10” take place in what appears to be a semi-outdoor area surrounded by large drapes.

A website associated with the league names a venue in the Indian state of Gujarat, but no reliable trace of the venue could be found outside of references to it on the site. Although we were unable to verify the exact location of this venue, shadows cast by the sun in some live-streams allowed us to use the Shadow Finder tool. The result intersected near Gujarat, making it likely that the venue is indeed located in this part of India.

Almost 11 hours into one stream, the appearance of rising sunlight on the cricket pitch suggested games were being played through the night and into the next morning. The time of the sunrise on the date of the stream also corresponds with this region in India.

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Connor Plunkett, Beau Donelly, Ross Higgins, Giancarlo Fiorella and Aiganysh Aidarbekova contributed to this article.

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