Independent.ie – The multiple arrests in Britain for football match-fixing in the past week, including one former Premier League player and two so-called international football “fixers” from Singapore, prompts the question as to how prepared Ireland is to face what many now regard as the number one integrity threat to sport.
The arrests were made in the wake of a sting by journalists from the Daily Telegraph, to whom an international fixer of games boasted about how easy it was to approach non-league footballers and officials to rig games for money and, benefiting from this inside information, how bets could then be placed on Asian websites.
In recent years many international agencies, including the United Nations, Interpol and the European Commission, have alerted sport to the extent of the threat posed by illegal gambling scams perpetrated by organised crime gangs based mainly in South-East Asia.
The potential threat is directly related to the growth in global sports betting in the past decade or so. It is now estimated that there are over 400 million sports betting odds movements per day, an increasing number of which take place on online betting exchanges. Including both the illegal and legal betting markets worldwide, the industry is now worth up to US$1 trillion and football betting accounts for 70 per cent of that market.
The reality of the threat to football was revealed earlier this year when a Europol investigation uncovered an extensive criminal network, mainly in Eastern Europe, dedicated to football match-fixing. The conspiracy involved a total of 425 matches and included Champions League fixtures.
