Sports Bettors Put Their Money On Banksy’s Identity In Light Of Lawsuit
Photo 268290981 © Giuseppe Anello | Dreamstime.com
Who is Banksy? For more than 30 years, the artist successfully went about spraying striking social and political commentaries onto walls without detection. The stakes are high, quite literally, in unmasking this talented character, as sports betting websites have now detoured from their usual games to guess his identity.
Jeff Koons and David Hockney—two figures whose works have broken records for being the highest paid for living artists at auctions—are among the several people named in an absurd laundry list of speculations about Banksy’s true identity on sites like Gambling911, BetUS, and BetOnline, according to a report by Hyperallergic.
Other guesses include famous names like KAWS, Alex Katz, Damien Hirst, JR, CJ Hendry, and even Morgan Freeman and Former US President Donald Trump.
The betting games have come in light of years-long legal clashes between Banksy and greeting card company Full Colour Black (FCB). Amid these rows, the street artist’s identity had been on the cusp of exposure as the European Union’s Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) had deemed that his deliberate anonymity and the public nature of his art made it difficult for him to make a stand in intellectual property rights.
The latest dispute against Banksy, filed by FCB and its owner Andrew Gallagher in the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court, was a libel claim centering around a now-deleted Instagram post that Banksy had published on November 18, 2022.
As the suit is pending response from Banksy, details remain closed off to the public. However, per Artnet News, the complaint cites that the offending post “contained defamatory words which referred to, and were understood to refer to, the Claimant.”
Among the many far-out guesses of Banksy’s true identity, Bristol-born artist Robin Gunningham has emerged as the one that most bettors are voting on. Gunningham’s name has been swirling around the rumor mill for years now, with former schoolmates singling him out as the faceless artist.
One of the betting sites, BetOnline, is nudging users to put their money on whom they think will win the lawsuit between FCB and Banksy.
[via Hyperallergic and Artnet News, cover photo 268290981 © Giuseppe Anello | Dreamstime.com]
