During the height of the pandemic a large number of sports betting corruption scandals broke in the mainstream press, most notably around so called ghost games. Tese ‘matches’ took place in a number of European countries in which gamblers were tricked into betting on games that did not happen. Te opportunities for match-fixing were highlighted in less popular sports. In July 2020, Te New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement told sportsbooks in the state to suspend betting on table tennis in the Ukraine or on any matches involving six specific Ukrainian players.
A look at INTERPOL's bi-weekly bulletin provides an insight into to the scale of the problem as well as the efforts made by police forces and other government enforcement agencies to ensure the integrity of sports worldwide. Just a quick glance shows criminals tampering with the results of a myriad of sports including cricket, tennis, football and, increasingly, eSports.
In the past few months a match-fixing scheme was unearthed in the Kenya Premier League, while a player in the Ghana Premier League claimed that he scored two deliberate own goals in a match so as to foil an alleged match-fixing plot. Two Russian tennis players were given lifetime bans. A Venezuelan tennis player was banned from the sport for 14 years.
Te FBI is probing match-fixing in Counter- Strike eSports in the US. Te Russian national Under-19 men's handball team had to submit to lie detector tests and "psychodiagnostic evaluation" in front of a security specialist before eight of them were banned for match fixing by the country's Handball Federation. In the past year, both Wimbledon and the French Open have been marked by suspicions of match-fixing
While there are many stories in the press, it is hard to accurately gauge the size of the activity due to its clandestine nature. However, Sportradar Integrity Services, a partner to more than 100 sporting federations and leagues, has used its betting monitoring system, the Universal Fraud Detection System (UFDS), to find suspicious activity across 12 sports in more than 70 countries. We are also getting a clearer picture of the size of the problem from government bodies.
Te Gambling Commission released its sports betting integrity snapshot for April 2021 - the first since licensees faced greater integrity reporting requirements. By sport, football received the most integrity reports, accounting for 44 per cent of the total. Tis was followed by tennis which received 21 per cent of reports, while eSports made up for a further 20 per cent. Other sports accounted for up to 15 per cent of the total reports made. In September 2019, 51 per cent of reports were from football, 30 per cent tennis, five per cent horseracing and 14 per cent from other sports.
According to Interpol’s report, “The Involvement of Organised Crime Groups in Sports Corruption,” sports betting involves organised crime groups operating
transnationally. The report characterised these gangs as
“often poly-criminal” whereby match fixing can be used “as a platform for organised crime groups to further high-scale money laundering schemes.” In addition “online betting is
increasingly used by organised crime groups to manipulate sports competitions.”
THE NATURE OF MATCH FIXING
Criminal groups view match fixing and betting corruption as a less risky criminal activity compared to other offences such as drug smuggling or people trafficking according to a number of law enforcement agencies. One of the most recent investigations was published by Europol in 2020.
According to its report “Te Involvement of Organised Crime Groups in Sports Corruption,” sports betting involves organised crime groups operating transnationally. Te report characterised these gangs as “often poly- criminal” whereby match fixing can be used “as a platform for organised crime groups to further high-scale money laundering schemes.” In addition, “online betting is increasingly used by organised crime groups to manipulate sports competitions.”
In common with much of the research carried out in the past, the report argues that criminals target lower tier leagues and matches largely under the radar, with football and tennis the most targeted sports by criminal networks. Tennis and individual sports were easier to manipulate, argues the report’s authors, with Eurasian organised crime groups heavily involved in tennis match-fixing.
Tis is the latest edition to a growing library on the threat sports betting manipulation poses to the integrity of sport. Unregulated markets in Asia in particular have come under the spotlight in recent years as researchers have gone beyond Europe and looked at illegal betting patterns in other markets internationally.
WIRE / PULSE / INSIGHT / REPORTS P39
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