BBC – While having a flutter at the bookies has long been associated with horse racing, the growth of online betting could see football challenge that position in Britain.
However, betting on football is now a worldwide phenomenon with much of the trading carried out on illegal markets in Asia, where the huge sums wagered bring with it the threat of match-fixing.
Here we look at the rise in betting, the risks of corruption and the history of cheating in the sport.
“The current estimations, which include both the illegal markets and the legal markets, suggest the sports match-betting industry is worth anywhere between $700bn and $1tn (£435bn to £625bn) a year,” says Darren Small, director of integrity at betting and sports data analysts Sportradar.
About 70% of that trade has been estimated to come from trading on football.
Sportradar has contracts to monitor betting on some 55,000 matches a year, running algorithms which cover 350 global bookmakers, to spot suspicious betting patterns. Concerns are raised with about 1% of fixtures monitored.
“It doesn’t sound a great deal but it is still 500 or so matches that are potentially fixed and we are talking potentially millions of pounds in turnover on these matches which is running through criminal activities,” says Small.
