ERASURE FILE · WHO PROFITS FROM THE ERASURE
A people that is busy partying does not notice its country disappearing.
Bread, Beer and Betting: Who Gave Nurik the Hippodrome?
Every league Saturday the State Hippodrome in Talas fills up. Ulak under floodlights. Two-for-one beer on the "Aigyr Deck". Girls in gold. Young men from the microdistricts in cowboy hats who have never sat on a horse. Jarysh says 14,000 people a night. Jarysh says a lot of things.
Start with the paper. In June 2018 the entertainment concession for Saturday nights at a STATE hippodrome went to Jarysh Entertainment Group for seven years. There was no tender. The Talas Herald reported it and nothing happened. The seven years ran out in 2025. Jarysh still runs the nights, and now calls the renewal "a formality".
Who is Jarysh? Nurlan Baisalov, "Nurik", "Nurik Jackpot". A nightclub promoter (Club Doran, 2004). Holiday flats in Antalya. Boxing nights in Almaty. And in 2019, the photograph from the Dubai World Cup: Nurik in a box, laughing, next to Alikhan Toktarov, the Governor's son who runs IradOne. Nurik says they are "just friends". Friends are useful when you want a hippodrome without a tender.
Then the betting. Under the Gaming and Lotteries Act 2011, the ONLY legal betting in the ISEZ is the Directorate's tote windows. Jarysh publishes "odds" on every game, "for information only", next to banners for a casino registered in CURAÇAO. Their betting address, bet.jarysh.com, has been blocked since November 2023, on the same list that blocks us. The difference? The casino banners are still on the Jarysh front page, every day, inside Irad. Some blocks are a punishment. Some blocks are a formality.
Even the beer is offshore. Aigyr Lager is brewed in Kara-Bulak and owned through Cyprus. Like us, it lives outside Irad. Unlike us, it sells you something every Saturday.
And in the valleys? In 2025 the Karakoyun elders banned Jarysh cameras from their games. The games, they said, are played for the clan, not for a price list. The people who still play the real game want nothing to do with the show.
We do not say Nurik is a criminal. We say: publish the 2018 concession. Publish the renewal. Name everyone who owns a share. Bread and circuses is the oldest trick there is. While the city watches the goat, the country goes.
See it for yourself, if your stomach can take the pop-ups: jarysh.com.