Fixing. You know, rigging matches. Michel Platini says it’s the greatest threat facing football. Fixing isn’t new, but betting and the internet have contrived to transform it into a menacing presence in European sport. Yet the media and the sporting public they inform don’t seem to recognise the gravity of the problem. Or what’s at stake.
Fixing, like most things, was first recorded by the Ancient Greeks, who built statues with fines paid by Olympic athletes found to have bribed their opponents. Cheating to win at all costs is, in a limited sense, honest. It does what it says on the tin. Cheating to lose is different. It punctures the visceral, tribal warfare of sport, and turns it into a flat, docile charade. No contest.
This isn’t scaremongering. Canadian author Declan Hill has delved deep into the underworld in The Fix: Soccer and Organised Crime. Hill infiltrated an Asian gambling ring and investigated fixing in Europe and at FIFA’s prized possession, the World Cup.
Ghana’s captain, Stephen Appiah, admitted to Hill he had been approached by a ‘fixer’ during the 2006 World Cup. Appiah said he turned down the offer, but had known this particular fixer for years. Appiah admitted to receiving $20,000 from the same fixer for winning a game at the 2004 Olympic Games. He shared the money amongst the team.
Last year, Platini confessed “Yes, we have problems with violence, with racism, with doping, but to fix a game is to attack the soul of football.” This isn’t a scourge sport can tackle on its own. “I am the president of UEFA, not Scotland Yard. I need help.”
The ghost of fixing past shows us some notorious soccer fixing scandals of yesteryear. In 1964 and 1965, ten British players were convicted of match fixing and four spent time slopping out after wagering on their teams to lose. One of them, Scottish international Jimmy Gauld (who played for Waterford United in the 1950s), admitted to systematically fixing English football league games. Numerous players of that era, including Busby Babe Harry Gregg, Eamon Dunphy and Brian Clough have spoken of how widespread fixing was in British football in the 1950s and 1960s.
It’s not just Italian clubs that have been caught up in match-fixing. Marseille and Anderlecht have both been punished. Nottingham Forest lost 3-0 to Anderlecht in the 1984 UEFA Cup semi-final when the Anderlecht club president gave a £20,000 ‘loan’ to the referee. The kind that isn’t repayable.
Fixing scandals haven’t tainted Irish soccer, but that doesn’t mean Irish sport was blemish-free. As part of a Late Late Show tribute to romanticised commentator Michael O’Hehir, an audience member casually recounted a failed attempt to fix the last race of a meeting in Tralee. Someone forgot to tell the jockey. Ask yourself. A once off?
Back to the present. Betting exchanges and illegal betting are the growth hormone to fixing. It’s not about fixing to win anymore. When you can back a horse or a team not to win, the potential for corruption is obvious. First corner, how many corners, first score, whether it’s a goal or a point, winning distance, you name it and consumer choice says you can bet on it. Or against it. Anytime. Anywhere. No borders.
Most countries in Europe have had fixing scandals in recent years, not just heresay and rumour, but documented investigations and prosecutions. The information is there if you dare to look.
In April 2010, Hill visited a London agency which places big bets for gambling professionals. They placed a bet of $10 million on Man Utd v AC Milan in the Champions League a few weeks previously. What’s more worrying is that they had placed a bet of €250,000 on an under 17s match in Norway.
Just this week, the Court of Arbitration for Sport backed UEFA’s lifetime ban of Ukrainian referee Oleg Oriekhov. In November 2009, Oriekhov refereed FC Basel v CSK Sofia in the Europa League. He was in contact with criminals involved in a betting ring and was offered €50,000 to manipulate the result. He failed to disclose the approaches by fixers, as required by UEFA rules.
Oriekhov is linked to an ongoing criminal trial in Germany. In late 2009 and in 2010, German police arrested fifty people on suspicion of fixing two-hundred and seventy matches across nine countries. The investigation has uncovered over €2m in alleged bribes to players, officials and referees and winnings of at least €15m.
Four are currently on trial. In his testimony to the German Court, Croat Ante Sapina, a convicted fixer, claimed to have paid €40,000 to Bosnian referee, Novo Panic, to fix the otherwise meaningless World Cup qualifying match between Finland and Liechtenstein in 2009. He also alleges that Jozef Marko, a Slovakian UEFA official involved in selecting referees, was paid tens of thousands of euros to appoint Panic to more lucrative matches. These revelations came a day after former St. Pauli player Rene Schnitzler confessed to a German magazine he had received €100,000 to fix five matches, although he denied actually manipulating any of the games.
The prosecutor, Andreas Bachmann, said “When you consider that we are investigating three-hundred people and that now only four people are standing trial, then it’s clear how much more work we have before us.”
Donegal Senator, Cecilia Keaveney, the chair of the Council of Europe’s Committee on Youth and Sport, laments the fact that she has been unable to get the media to pay any attention to her work on the issue. Despite a number of press releases, the media haven’t taken up the baton. The Senator placed a motion before the Bureau meeting of the Council of Europe on corruption in sport and hopes to shortly get approval to prepare a report on the feasibility of an international agency to face down corruption in sport.
David Howman, director general of WADA, has called for a WADA-style anti-corruption body. The idea has been supported by the UK Sports Minister, Hugh Robertson. Experts estimate it would take only .25% of the gross turnover of the betting companies to allow a well-resourced anti-corruption body to operate.
Portfolios, short selling, bonds, CFDs – they’re all forms of gambling masquerading as ‘investment’. They’re all regulated. Insider trading and the use of inside information are crimes. Why should the same not apply to sports betting?
The ghost of fixing yet to come takes us to Asia to see what European sport could become. According to US authorities, the annual turnover of the illegal Asian markets is $450 billion. Rampant fixing in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and China means that many Asian football leagues are ignored by native football fans. If people don’t believe in sport, they won’t participate and Asian officials have privately admitted that entire generations of players have been lost because of corruption.
The vast amounts of money in illegal Asian betting pools make European sport susceptible to influence. It all comes down to the smell of money. The ease and immediacy with which gangs of organised criminals can put money on a team or horse to lose, must sound the alarm. It’s time to act before it’s too late. Raising awareness is the first step.
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