Analysis: Fixing the problem of match-fixing

It is exactly 100 years since eight players from the Chicago White Sox accepted bribes from a gambling syndicate to throw baseball’s World Series in 1919. The infamous ‘Black Sox Scandal’, as it was later dubbed, left a stain on the team and the sport for years to come. One century on and match-fixing is still an omnipresent threat to the integrity of sport the world over, particularly when betting is now so widespread, and athletes and officials are susceptible to corruption.

For Khalid Ali, secretary general of the International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA), which recently rebranded from ESSA to better reflect its remit as a global sports integrity monitoring outfit, this scourge is impossible to ignore in 2019. “Betting integrity has become a core issue now for almost every regulator. Maybe five or seven years ago it was not really a headline issue, but now after problem gambling and advertising this is the other big issue out there.”

The IBIA’s latest quarterly report revealed the number of alerts raised for suspicious betting activity actually fell 17% year-on-year in Q2 from 61 to 51. However, the 51 events identified in the three months to 30 June marked a 38% quarter-on-quarter rise on the 37 alerts reported in Q1. Once again, tennis was responsible for most alerts in the latest report – 25 in total. There were 18 alerts for football matches, while suspicions were raised over two matches each for volleyball and esports. Finally, basketball, ice hockey, pool and table tennis had one alert each.

Game, set and match fixed

Despite tennis raising the most red flags in Q2, there was a 43% fall in alerts compared with Q2 2018. This was backed up by data released by the Tennis Integrity Unit (TIU), the anti-corruption body set up over 10 years ago to investigate match-fixing. Between April and June, the TIU received a total of 33 match alerts from regulated betting firms, with 32 relating to the lower-level ITF World Tour and ATP Challenger circuits. However, the London-headquartered body said the quarterly figure of 33 alerts and the half-year total of 54 alerts were the lowest since 2015 when this kind of data was first made public.

Picture: iStock.com/Bobex-73

The TIU suggested this could be due to a number of factors, including fewer matches played on the ITF World Tour. Indeed, there were 19,743 matches played between April and June compared with 24,611 over the same period last year. Another explanation is the dismantlement of a major match-fixing operation. In January, Spanish police smashed a match-fixing ring involving an Armenian gang and 28 lower-rung tennis players. A raid on 11 houses led to the seizure of luxury vehicles, credit cards, €167,000 in cash and a shotgun, while 42 bank accounts were frozen.

Ali says: “This was a root-and-branch take out. We believe that is one of the key reasons we have seen a quarterly drop.” He adds: “Tennis has been really proactive trying to sort this out.” The question now is whether this bust will deter other criminal gangs from trying to fix tennis matches. “We have seen a decrease in alerts for tennis but will a criminal gang that has been taken out start targeting another sport? By the end of the year we might have an idea, especially when we compare it to previous years,” Ali explains.

Dirtying the beautiful game

Football – by far the world’s most popular sport among gamblers – isn’t immune from corruption, of course. The problem for the authorities and the IBIA is that fixes are often orchestrated from Asia where betting is conducted in the shadows. A pyramid network sees bets filter up from street bookies to regional layers and finally the high-volume, low-margin major bookmakers. And unlike betting with a regulated European online sportsbook, there are precious little audit trails in the Far East to trace bets placed by fixers.

“A lot of these criminal gangs are sophisticated,” says Ali. “They know who they should and shouldn’t be betting with.” While the perpetrators tend to target lower level football and more obscure leagues, a number of players, ex-players and executives from clubs from Spain’s top three divisions were arrested at the end of May. The swoop was part of an investigation into match-fixing involving at least three games in the first, second and third tiers of Spanish football. One second division match attracted 14 times the normal levels of betting activity, the police said.

Khalid Ali, secretary general of the IBIA

Furthermore, a judge probing match-fixing in Spain alleges seven Valladoid players conspired with a criminal gang to fix their match against Valencia on the final day of La Liga, guaranteeing Valencia qualification for the Champions League. It is alleged this match was manipulated for betting purposes, although there is no suggestion Valencia was aware of, or involved in, the fix. If it’s true that one of Europe’s top leagues has been infiltrated by a match fixing ring, this is a disturbing development.

A coordinated fight

Meanwhile, the Spanish government gave the go-ahead in July for the creation of its first National Commission to combat match-fixing and corruption in sport. Its first meeting is slated for September. The move is welcomed by Jdigital, the association representing over 30 of Spain’s online operators. “The National Commission will provide a more structured forum to share information and promote joint measures to fight against criminals targeting sports,” president Mikel López de Torre tells EGR Compliance.  

He adds: “Match-fixing is in the spotlight, and that´s exactly where it should remain to prevent any temptations. As bookmakers, our role is key in both raising alerts when we suspect a match might be fixed, or users could be involved in illicit activities based on their history with us. But simultaneously, the competitions and the administration have to acknowledge the problem, take a proactive role and fight the issue.”

Besides the creation of the National Commission, Spain’s regulator, the Directorate General for the Regulation of Gambling (DGOJ), issued a resolution in July banning sports betting on events played “exclusively or mainly by minors”. Different jurisdictions have different stances on this issue, as eight operators found out to their cost last month when they were fined a total of SEK41.2m (€3.9m) by Sweden’s regulator for flouting regulations and accepting wagers on events involving under 18s.

While avoiding the normalisation of gambling among minors is one motivation for these bans, there is also the fear that children could be easy prey for fixers. This is also a concern in esports where some participants are juveniles. Ali says allowing betting on underage events has been “discussed many times at length” among IBIA members.

Ultimately, though, he believes it is up to the regulators to decide. He continues: “A number of our members have a policy of not offering amateur and youth events. Where it becomes a little bit more complicated is when you have one player in a tournament and everyone else is over 18.”

All above board   

Right now, continued cooperation between betting companies, sports governing bodies and the authorities is the way to curtail match-fixing, even if it’s impossible to eradicate it completely. Moreover, countries that haven’t regulated and licensed betting, thereby allowing a black market to thrive, are perfect breeding grounds for fixes. “The challenge has always been the unregulated market,” Ali says. “You only have to look at India and there is a huge illegal market. Countries need to have regulated markets and they need to start taking this seriously.” Against this backdrop, 51 suspicious alerts IBIA flagged in Q2 would appear to be a drop in the ocean compared to the true scale of the problem.