Sports
WGB Jackpot Winner Gets N5.1m after Playing with N50
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
A jackpot winner of Winners Golden Bet (WGB), Mr Ajibola Bakinson, has received his payment of the €12,016.00 (about N5.1 million) he won.
Mr Bakinson had played the game with N50 on Monday, December 4, 2017 with the ticket ID– 977952048317. He did not know his life would be changed forever for good until he found out that his N50 ‘gamble’ had won his over N5 million.
WGB, one of Nigeria’s leading sports betting firms, presented the cheque to the winner on Tuesday, December 5, 2017.
The brief ceremony was held at the WGB office located at 9a, Balogun Street, Alausa, Ikeja, Lagos, with the company’s Executive Director, Mr Olabanji Sulaiman, on ground to honour the 44-year-old winner.
Narrating how his journey to the ‘millionaires’ club’ started, Mr Bakinson said, “I was about eating at the canteen when I was called that I won. Could you believe I lost appetite immediately because of excessive joy? It is still like a dream to me until I lay my hand on the cash.”
“Anytime a stalker wins, no matter how much you win, you are always happy. It is still like a surprise to me. I do have the feeling that there will be a lucky day for me but I never knew it was going to be like this.
“In fact, when I wanted to play the game, I was like this December, things are usually tight but thank God I risked the lucky ball game. The game is like a jackpot. When you win, at times it comes back in double winnings, it’s like double the money you were supposed to win and if it falls on World jackpot, its huge and that was what happened in my case, even the ticket that was not a winning ticket for lucky ball games yet the ticket qualified as a jackpot-winning ticket for me, I almost threw the ticket away.
“Out of 48 balls with numbers drawn, I chose 6 balls and luckily for me, they were lucky numbers that fell on Global.
“I am always like there is a spirit inside the game which usually says amen to people’s game.”
According to WGB’s AGM Marketing, Mrs Patricia Popoola, the World jackpot is not an everyday game, adding that such drops once in a while.
“If it were to be the usual game, he would probably be aiming at a good amount of money but luckily, his game fell on world jackpot that is paid in Euro. It was his lucky day and he won big,” she said.
Mrs Popoola said the company has no problem paying the winnings in foreign currency (EURO), adding that such big winning is not new to the organization even when it is not the jackpot game people still win big.
In a related development, two other winners, a 40-year-old civil servant, Mr Peter Amaehule and Mr Christopher Obinna Ndigwe, equally emerged in Port Harcourt, Rivers state in sports Betting (Champions League); both won N5.2 million each.
The 49-year-old Mr Ndigwe, while speaking with our correspondent, said his wife, who gave him the N500 (ticket ID: 121074889) he used to play the game, scolded with him that he’s fond of wasting money playing the game and not winning.
According to him, “I had no more on me and asked my wife to borrow me N500. Instead, she scolded me and warned me not to be wasting money playing the game again. Fortunately for me, I won N5.2 million.”
An elated Mr Amaehule, who played the game with N100 (ticket ID: 121073982) and won N5.2 million as well, expressed happiness and was short of words when interviewed by our correspondent.
By Dipo Olowookere
A fully synthetic multilingual Artificial Intelligence (AI) presenter known as AILA has been unveiled by Flashscore, one of the world’s largest digital sports data and news platforms.
Flashscore, which boasts more than 155 million monthly users, said the AI presenter was developed in collaboration with a creative high-value AI production studio, Fameplay.
AILA turns Flashscore’s sports data-driven features and narratives into localised presenter-led video, a statement from the company made available to Business Post said.
It anchored Route 48, Flashscore’s player-by-player data profile series, in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, and fronted an app-download campaign across Latin America, Spain and France, speaking each market’s language natively.
On the strength of that run, Flashscore is now ready to extend AILA across product and editorial announcements, original shows and partnerships.
Flashscore noted that AILA does not replace human editorial teams or studios, but rather complements them effectively and adds an always-available element.
“AILA was created by deliberately separating two distinct elements. The performance itself, the movement, facial expressions, and on-screen presence, was licensed from a real actress. The face, however, was built entirely from scratch: fully synthetic and fully owned,” the Chief AI Producer and co-founder of Fameplay, Lukáš Záhoř, stated.
“AILA can speak in dozens of languages, across any format, at any time, without being constrained by the availability or limitations of a human performer.
“Most synthetic presenters, by contrast, borrow a real person’s face and simply hope no one asks who actually owns it. For Flashscore, we created an asset that will only become more valuable over time, not a deepfake that lasts only until the first lawsuit,” Záhoř added.
Also commenting, the Chief Digital Content Officer at Livesport, Alan Záruba, said, “Our newsroom reaches millions of people, and we built our own studios to enhance our content the way we want it.
“AILA is an extension of that, not a departure from it. We want to stay at the forefront of the current digital development and AI-powered stream. When we briefed Fameplay on how to handle the concept of an AI digital avatar which can radically change the way we would scale our content, we wrote a single line to define future AILA: she’s built from numbers, but she speaks in stories.”
By Adedapo Adesanya
Nigeria’s Super Falcons have failed to qualify for the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup after suffering a 2-1 defeat to South Africa in their play-off encounter on Thursday night.
The Nigerian team, reeling from a 1-0 loss to Cameroon in the quarter-finals of the CAF Women’s African Cup of Nations (WAFCON) on Sunday, showed no signs of putting their misery to bed as they went two goals down to the Bayana Bayana team. It took a late penalty scored by Christy Uchebe to halve the deficit after the South Africans went down to 10 players.
The Super Falcons needed a victory against their opponents to progress to the next stage of the qualification process and secure one of the two available tickets to the intercontinental play-offs. The defeat ended their hopes of making it to the 2027 tournament, which will be hosted by Brazil.
The result brings an end to Nigeria’s remarkable record of appearing at every edition of the Women’s World Cup since the tournament was first held in 1991.
The play-offs were introduced to determine the final African representatives after four teams were eliminated at the quarter-final stage of the 2026 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations.
Two qualification tickets were available, with Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire battling for the opportunity to advance.
Ghana secured one of the available tickets after defeating Côte d’Ivoire 2-1, while South Africa claimed the other following their victory over the Super Falcons.
The Super Falcons had featured in all previous editions of the tournament, making their absence from the 2027 World Cup a significant moment in the history of Nigerian women’s football.
It also raises fresh questions about the direction of Nigerian national football after the Super Eagles also failed to qualify for the recently concluded FIFA World Cup held in the USA, Canada, and Mexico.
European football returns with a bang as the new season kicks off. The dust has barely settled on the 2026 FIFA World Cup, but European football wastes no time getting back to business. Over the next two weeks, the continent’s prominent competitions will launch in quick succession, giving fans a dense run of fixtures across the UEFA Super Cup, the FA Community Shield, La Liga, the Premier League and Serie A.
Paris Saint-Germain, fresh off back-to-back Champions League triumphs, faces Aston Villa in the UEFA Super Cup on Wednesday 12 August at 8pm which will be airing on Supersport across DStv & GOtv, with the French side chasing a second successive Super Cup crown against an Aston Villa team that has become an increasingly serious force in European competition.
England’s traditional curtain-raiser follows four days later. The FA Community Shield, staged in Cardiff on Sunday 16 August at 3pm, pits Premier League champions Arsenal against FA Cup holders Manchester City, the latter beginning life under new manager Enzo Maresca, while Arsenal look to reinforce their status as the team to beat.
Spain gets moving over the same weekend, with La Liga’s opening round running from Saturday 15 to Monday 17 August. Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid have all been given extended rest following Spain’s World Cup win, leaving the door open for the chasing pack to set an early pace before Matchday 2 arrives from 20 to 24 August.
The Premier League then starts the following weekend, running from Friday 21 to Monday 24 August. Champions Arsenal open their title defence at home to promoted Coventry, before a full round of fixtures featuring Manchester United, Tottenham, Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea, among others, round out the opening weekend. Serie A joins the calendar on the same weekend, from 22 to 24 August, with holders Inter Milan starting their title defence against Monza and Napoli, Juventus, Milan and Roma all in early action.
With five major competitions launching inside a fortnight, the new European season promises an unrelenting start. All the action will be available live on SuperSport, across DStv and GOtv.
