Monitoring body needed to prevent betting scandals, says report
A NEW worldwide monitoring centre needs to be established to guard against corruption in sport, according to a study co-authored by the University of Salford.
The study argues that the greater involvement of organised crime in sports fraud and match fixing means that a monitoring body is needed in order to help protect the integrity of sports.
The university teamed up with researchers from the Paris-based Institute of International and Strategic Relations (IRIS), the China Centre for Lottery Studies and criminal organisation research specialists Praxes Avocats to study dozens of criminal cases worldwide involving the manipulation of sports events.
Report co-author Professor David Forrest, Professor of Economics at the University of Salford Business School, said: “believes that the huge volume of money being bet on sporting events brings considerable risks to the integrity of sports competitions which are not addressed in a consistent and co-ordinated way.
He said: “The frequency of proven cases of corruption in European football, for example, would surprise many people.
“Despite the excellent work of UEFA, which monitors over 300 gambling websites for unusual betting patterns, it is estimated that around 1 in 100 professional European football matches are fixed in some way, equating to several each week.
“Bets of €200,000-300,000 can be readily placed by agents using high volume Asian markets, even on relatively minor tiers of competition like the Belgian Second Division, where footballers’ wages are low and so players are potentially more susceptible to bribery.
“This underlines how vulnerable sport can be to corruption.”
The study highlights a number of prominent cases of match rigging to illustrate the prevalence of betting-related corruption in sport. A recent example is the ongoing ‘Bochum’ European football investigation in Germany, which so far has led to the trial and imprisonment of nine members of a Balkan criminal gang. The investigation has uncovered payments of over €12 million in just one year to bribe players, coaches, referees and officials to fix 320 domestic, European and international matches in nine European countries.
Prof Forrest said: “The credibility of professional sport is under threat in the current climate of judicial investigations, scandals and fraud across many countries.
“Only if there is co-operation at international level between the betting industry, regulators, judicial systems and sports governing bodies can an effective resistance against fixing be mounted.”
