Gambling is 'bigger threat to sport than doping'

[dave nz]

Authorities intend to make players register every bet to weed out corruption

By Nick Harris

Friday, 6 March 2009


Professional sportsmen and women face having to register every bet they make under stringent reforms intended to root out corrupt gambling.
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In the past 17 months, the industry watchdog the Gambling Commission has investigated 47 cases of alleged match-fixing and illegal betting on British sporting events, The Independent has learnt. The governing bodies of football, tennis, cricket, horse racing and other sports are discussing with ministers plans for tough new regulations which they hope will stamp out what they consider to be "as great a risk to the integrity of sport as doping".

One senior official explained the threat to the country's most popular spectator events, saying: "Football, rugby and cricket don't have a doping problem, but they know they have serious gambling problems."

British sporting officials have privately voiced concerns to the Government about insider betting. The Sports minister, Gerry Sutcliffe, will take the lead in negotiations with the governing bodies and the Gambling Commission to combat the threat.

A spokesman for the commission told The Independent that horse racing, football and snooker accounted for most of the match- fixing allegations, but it was widely accepted that cricket and tennis are among the other susceptible disciplines.

A "golden decade" lies ahead for British sport: London will host the 2012 Olympics, Glasgow has the 2014 Commonwealth Games and England is bidding to host the 2018 World Cup. But administrators fear these events could be undermined by a major betting scandal of the type seen abroad.

In 2000, the South Africa cricket captain Hansie Cronje admitted taking a £68,000 payment from Bookmaker.com/?cmpid=4437" target="_blank">Bookmakers for providing them with match information to fix the results of games. He was banned from the sport for life, and later died in a plane crash.

The Football Association's current investigations include a match between Accrington Stanley and Bury in May last year, which led to reports of irregular betting patterns. It is also trying to establish who profited from a £1m punt on a non-league fixture between Weymouth and Rushden & Diamonds last month, when Weymouth fielded their reserve team and lost 9-0.

However, the FA faces an uphill struggle. In October, it began investigating a Championship match between Derby and Norwich following an alleged Asian betting sting. But it was forced to halt the inquiry because it has no jurisdiction outside the UK and could not establish who was behind the bets, which were all placed overseas. As one senior sports executive said last night: "A major betting scandal in any of our sports would be toxic for Britain's reputation. Complacency is not an option."

Punters across the globe flock to bet on British sport because it has a reputation for integrity and fairness. A range of strict new measures is proposed, such as random checks on betting firms' books to seek evidence of improper wagers, and monitoring all betting activity by professional sportspeople.

It could become mandatory for an athlete to be listed in a commission register – to be shared with gambling operators – that would trigger an investigation any time he placed a bet in contravention of his sport's rules, either with a traditional bookie or online. No such monitoring is in place now.

Sport and gambling have long been bedfellows. Footballers were renowned as punters long before the 1970s quip that "if Stan Bowles could pass a bookie like he could pass a ball, he would have had no worries". The existing rules do not forbid footballers from betting on football matches per se – only those they are involved in.

Jockeys are banned from betting on all horse racing, while trainers can back their own horse to win, but not to lose.

The sporting authorities will tell Mr Sutcliffe that they should have a greater say in what bets a Bookmaker.com/?cmpid=4437" target="_blank">bookmaker can offer, arguing that "high-risk markets" – which can be manipulated by just one person's actions – invite malpractice. Examples include the number of double-faults a tennis player will serve, eliciting a booking in football, or being run out in cricket. It is currently possible to bet on all of these.

No one knows the extent of corrupt betting in British sport, but the Gambling Commission told The Independent that in just 17 months it received 47 notifications of betting patterns that were sufficiently irregular that they may lead the commission to consider voiding a bet.

Of those, 35 involved betting firms notifying governing bodies of irregularities; the other 12 were a mix of governing bodies asking bookmakers to look at incidents, or the commission asking bookmakers to act on independent "intelligence".

Not all suspicious cases will be officially reported. The Independent understands, for example, that every season the FA begins inquiries into "about five or six" cases of what could widely be termed "gambling-related malpractice". Most of these are not reported to the Gambling Commission and are closed, perhaps after a warning to a player not to bet on his own team.

Rarer cases of concern involve insiders betting with prior knowledge of a likely defeat or another specific incident, such as a red card. These are complex and the FA's investigations – at least one of which is ongoing – are long and secretive. Tim Payton, a spokesman for a coalition of governing bodies that includes football, cricket and horse racing, among others, said: "Match fixing is as great a risk to the integrity of sport as doping. That is why the sports have been campaigning for greater regulation of sports betting for some time.

"We are encouraged that [Mr Sutcliffe] has responded positively to our suggestion that we work with his department and the Gambling Commission to review and strengthen the arrangements that are in place. British sport has a good reputation and wants to keep it that way. The budget for the UK's anti-doping programme has just increased to £8m a year. This includes a huge testing programme which has a considerable deterrent effect as participants know they face a high chance of being detected. The same rigour needs to be applied to match fixing."
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Doping is still the biggest threat.
jamesbeckton wrote:
Friday, 6 March 2009 at 12:42 pm (UTC)
I disagree massively. Gambling will never effect the results of the top tier of sport because the competitors will want to win too much. For someone like Tiger Woods, Roger Federer or Christiano Ronaldo, money is a mere sideshow to the determnation to win.

Athletics at the Olympics have been tarnished by drugs in the last few decades: Ben Johnson drugged up to the max in 1988, Marion Jones cheating her way to three gold medals and Justin Gaitlin coming from nowhere to win in Athens. In many cases it took years for the cheats to be revealed and did untold damage to the sport as people realised they had been sold a lie. Some individuals such as Marion Jones and Tom Montgomery were using such sophisticated drugs that they never failed a test. Drugs have turned the Tour de France into the Tour de Farce in recent years asit became clear that all the top cyclists seemed to be drugged up to their eyeballs.

Why did they do this? Why did these sportsman risk their careers that they had trained so hard for most of their life? They did it for success and glory, as well as money. If you are taking drugs, then you are striving to succeed. You want t give yourslef an edge over your rivals. If you take money from gambling syndicates, you can only lose. The risk isn't worth the potential gain and the money involved in elite sport will nevermake it worthwhile for world class sportman (and women) to throw matches or races. Doping will remain the number one threat to the credibility of world sport.
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All-in-all, gambling is bad for humanity
hanif001 wrote:
Friday, 6 March 2009 at 09:14 pm (UTC)
The final revelation 2:219 They ask thee concerning wine and gambling. Say: "In them is great sin and some profit for men; but the sin is greater than the profit."
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Making Mountains Out of Molehills
na_gcopaleen wrote:
Friday, 6 March 2009 at 10:58 pm (UTC)
"No one knows the extent of corrupt betting in British sport, but the Gambling Commission told The Independent that in just 17 months it received 47 notifications of betting patterns that were sufficiently irregular that they may lead the commission to consider voiding a bet."

Considering the number of sporting events and the various betting options available within each of those events, I would suggest that 47 notifications to the Gambling Commission of ' ... irregular betting patterns ...' is so miniscule that the reaction to such a statistic would hardly warrant the raising of an eyebrow.
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Making Mountains Out of Molehills
na_gcopaleen wrote:
Friday, 6 March 2009 at 11:06 pm (UTC)
"No one knows the extent of corrupt betting in British sport, but the Gambling Commission told The Independent that in just 17 months it received 47 notifications of betting patterns that were sufficiently irregular that they may lead the commission to consider voiding a bet."

Taking into account the number of sporting events and the various betting options available within each of those events, I would suggest that 47 notifications within 17 months to the Gambling Commission of ' ... irregular betting patterns ...' is so miniscule that the reaction to such a statistic would hardly warrant the raising of an eyebrow.
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In reality the money betrays both the crime and the criminal
bloodhound09 wrote:
Sunday, 8 March 2009 at 09:32 am (UTC)
The article mentioned
"high-risk markets" ? which can be manipulated by just one person's actions"
the examples given were
"double-faults a tennis player will serve, eliciting a booking in football, or being run out in cricket"

The truth is in this country that the volume of money bet on these markets are so low that any serious money making bets immediatly draw the attention of a bookmaker - and they REALLY don't like being taken for mugs.

For instance - a premiership football booking market could expect to get at most £5000 in total bets . Anything more than that and it raises suspicions. The cost of bribing a player outweigh the rewards you can make without getting caught.

The only way this scam can succeed is if the bets are spread very thinly in countries where the bets are not aggregated by the betting firms. This is getting more and more difficult as information technology allows bookies to total up all bets placed. You have to remember that bookmakers have a very strong financial interest in not getting conned by these betting scams.

The betting exchanges take bets from both individuals and bookmakers laying off ( reducing the risk of) the bets placed with them. When a small market for something like number of double faults in a tennis match gets a few thousand pounds instead of the ususal few hundred pounds people start to notice. Questions get asked and video footage is examined.

All in all bookmakers don't like getting conned so unless it is a really big betting event - major horseracing, football finals, tennis grandslam finals - the money will betray the crime. and which athlete in their right mind would throw an important event for a small bribe??


Drugs in sport

If you doubt the effect that doping is having on sports consider that all the following champions have had had to deal with very public allegations of drug taking - world record holders Usain Bolt ( 100m sprint gold medal winner), Lance Armstrong ( tour de france record breaking 7 wins ) Barry Bonds ( Record for most home runs in US baseball beating babe ruth's record who was booed in the process) Rio ferdinand ( champions league winner ) was banned for 8 months for missing a drugs test
former Manchester united defender Jaap Stam ( also a champions league winner) recieved a 5-month ban whilst at Lazio for having the nandrolone in his system.

These medal winners make it look like you need drugs to be a top sports man or woman - this seems a far bigger threat to the integrity of sport than a few pounds on a non-league footbal match

AND FYI in the match between Weymouth and Rushden & Diamonds the supporters knew that all the players were on strike over non payment of wages, ALL the fans knew the strike was going to happen as it had been widely reported. The smart ones got to the bookies just before kickoff. Bookmakers knew there was something wrong before the match was over but as there is nothing in the Bookmakers rules about non payment when players strike AND the information was in the public domain. They were forced to pay out. In this football match there is no mystery syndicates - the bookmakers just dropped the ball.