eGaming Review

Do allegations of match-fixing and illegal betting within the gentleman’s game also threaten to put the bookmaking industry in a tricky spot?

WORDS SCOTT LONGLEY

ON THE DAY OF the announcement by the Jamaican police that they considered the death of Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer to be suspicious, the world of cricket found itself at the centre of an exotic mystery more suited to the pages of an airport thriller.

A gruesome death, players being questioned by the police, and rumours of possible motives for murder – it was a heady death-in paradise cocktail and the press lapped it up.

But it was allegations of match-fixing and illegal betting that put the cricket authorities on the spot. The possibility that the sport’s biggest event, the ICC World Cup, might be tainted was a publicity disaster.

In terms of scandals, cricket might have thought the Hanse Cronje affair was as bad as it could get. When the late South African captain was found guilty of being involved in a match-fixing ring in the late 1990s, the game struggled to avoid being forever tainted in the eyes of the watching public.

But with the sensational coverage surrounding the untimely death of Woolmer, rumours of corruption at the heart of the game once again threaten to overwhelm the sport. Cricket is in trouble and seemingly the murky world of illegal bookmaking in the subcontinent is intimately involved.

On the back foot

In such situations betting finds itself – to use the cricketing parlance – on the back foot. The illegal operations referred to in the papers are genuinely a world away from the regulated gambling markets in Europe and elsewhere. But that doesn’t stop people putting two and two together and making five.

“Not for the first time, it is entirely innuendo, rumour and gossip,” says Graham Sharpe, spokesperson at William Hill. “It’s easy newspaper shorthand, that illegal underground bookies are to blame.”

“The only way to stop the bad press is to explain the situation,” says Wally Pyrah, spokesperson at spread-betting firm Sporting Index.

“It is like it was a few years ago with the Cronje affair when that all exploded. We have to explain that what happens in the Far East is very different from what goes on in the UK.”

Understandably, when it comes to the illegal betting market in the subcontinent, there is scant knowledge. The best guess from industry insiders is that it works in a similar fashion as the agent system that predominates further east in Asia (see eGaming Review, March 2007).

“It’s all illegal out east,” says Pyrah. “It hasn’t changed in 25 years or more. It’s all backstreet bookies.” In fact, the nature of where the money has come from and the sums involved make it the kind of business that bookmakers in the UK and elsewhere tend to try their collective best to avoid.

“Would the big bookies over here know anything about these operators on the subcontinent? Maybe,” said a UK industry insider. “They certainly know all about the big operators out in the Far East who bet largely on football. If they can give them the swerve, they do.”

Their squeamishness is understandable. When huge sums of money are involved, the possibility of corruption is never far behind, whatever the sport. But the nature of the cricket betting markets also causes its own problems.

Another name for line betting

Unlike with other team sports, many of the betting markets are bets based on the performance of individual players, such as the number of wides or an individual batsman’s runs. Tap up one player willing to take the money, and one (un)believably poor shot later the bet is won and the authorities and watching public are none the wiser. Illegal bookies 1, the game of cricket 0.

Superficially, these kind of markets resemble those of the spread betters. But Pyrah is keen to dispel any comparisons. “A new term has come up – spot fixing. But this is really just another name for line betting. It’s what they have in the US, the over and under markets. Our kind of markets are really just attention-grabbing markets.

If someone came to us with a huge amount of money on any of these kind of markets, we would be highly suspicious. It’s all about KYC (know your customer).”

“This is why regulation works,” says Peter Greenhill, chief executive of Asian-facing betting and gaming operator Betex. “All the transactions are transparent, including with the betting exchanges, and there is a paper trail. It is all above board.”

The point is reiterated by Pyrah: “We are regulated by the FSA (Financial Services Authority) and all our bets are legally binding contracts. If anything is untoward we are legally bound to inform the authorities.”

If the events surrounding the death of Woolmer threaten to have any impact it is in the arena of public perception. But Sharpe from Hill’s makes the point that the UK industry has moved quickly to head off any public suspicions.

“We have gone out of our way to say to the press and public that we have seen nothing by way of untoward betting patterns,” he says.

“No evidence has been provided whatsoever. We don’t believe any long-lasting damage has been done.”

Simon Clare, spokesperson at UK high-street rival Coral, agrees. “Any suspicion of corruption related to these events has had absolutely no impact on the betting in the UK market. I really don’t think there is any problem with perception.”

Instead, Clare points to problems far closer to home as being the cause of any possible lack of public trust. “The ongoing investigations into horse racing are of greater concern.That is directly related to the UK betting market and is something that UK bookmakers are definitely concerned about.”

When it comes to sport and corruption, both the sporting bodies and the bookmakers face a Sisyphean task. Football, snooker, darts and, of course, horse racing have all faced either allegations or actual proof of corruption in recent years. “Fundamentally, this is not just a problem with cricket,” Clare says. “Though it is very hard to fix a football match, we have seen only recently the problems with that German referee (Robert Hoyser who admitted matchfixing in 2005). Every sport is corruptible. Every sport has to keep its eye on things.”

“It’s an unwelcome part of sport, but there will always be scandals and corruption where there is money involved,” says Sharpe. “But punters tend to be a phlegmatic bunch. You should never appear complacent, but the public are not stupid.”

Or at least, it is to be hoped they are not.

However, it can be presumed that there must be more than a few in India who are rueing the day they got suckered by a good price on Pakistan in the World Cup. Allegedly, we should probably add. “It’s an unwelcome part of sport but there will always be scandals where there is money involved.”

What they said…

England captain Michael Vaughan: “I am aware of all the speculation surrounding Bob’s death and I am not aware of any talk of match-fixing. Personally, there have never been any incidents nor (have I) been involved in any conversations regarding fixing a game. I have never been approached.
“Do I think the problems persist? That is a hard question and if I’m honest I have to say yes, maybe it does go on. I have never experienced it within any of my teams or with any players I’ve played with or against but my gut feeling is that there is still something going on in the game. Nothing specific but just bad things that I’ve seen with certain passages of play or games that look slightly unusual. My gut feeling, and this is a huge statement I know, is that it is very hard to clear the whole world of cricket of it.”

Mike Selvey, The Guardian, 24 March: “I spend my working life watching cricket and at times, when good sides get beaten by bad and great players perform atrociously, it is extremely difficult not to be cynical.”
The Guardian, 24 March: Total betting volumes for India versus Sri Lanka was believed to be around £32m “with close to half of those amounts coming from overseas, mostly in the Middle East. Dubai was expected to be a big market... Everybody wants India to win and numbers are showing that. But when it comes to bets on players, it is the well informed who play.”

The Observer ‘Blood Sport’, 25 March: “In calm words, (Paul) Condon, the chairman of the Anti-Corruption and Security Unit of the International Cricket Council, said corruption was ruining sport across the globe, aided and abetted by star names working with shady bookies to fix the results of matches. He told how match-fixing syndicates, some linked to organised crime and terrorism, were flourishing in an environment where sums as large as £500m are wagered on the outcome of a one-day international.

“The most sinister and important (development) is the opportunity now to bet on who will lose as well as who
will win during a sporting event. Although a sportsman cannot guarantee that he or his team will win, he can
most certainly guarantee that they will lose. That has transformed sporting gambling and the potential for
corruption in sporting events. “The tempting and very profitable prospect for a corrupt sportsman is that working alone or with others he can fix the outcome of a sporting event, or part of it, and achieve a very significant betting coup. The betting analogy that I often draw is that the corrupt sportsman creates the equivalent of knowing in advance when the roulette wheel is going to land on red or black. Imagine the betting potential if you knew that.”
Mark Shields, deputy commissioner of police in Jamaica: “One aspect is what were the odds on Ireland if Ireland won. I understand that they were extremely good if you bet on Ireland. The match-fixing thing is being looked at.”

Unnamed ICC official: “It’s because of the way betting has gone, where punters now wager on how many
a player will score, how many catches he’ll drop, who’ll bowl the first wide – all things one player can influence.”

Posted: 2007-05-10