By Andrew Warshaw
May 11 – China and India may be arguably the world’s two biggest untapped footballing markets but unless they solve the problem of match-fixing and betting fraud they will never catch up.
That is the stark assessment of former FIFA director of security Chris Eaton, one of the world’s leading authorities on sports corruption who now runs the integrity department at the International Centre for Sports Security (ICSS).
Eaton told the recent Soccerex Asian Forum in Jordan that Asian nations must push harder in following the United States by moving towards “transparent, legalised, regulated and supervised sport betting, so there will be far less money to fix football or any other sports matches.”
China and India are at particular risk, he said, with their sports development hampered by betting fraud as fans become increasingly cynical and suspicious. Chinese football, he said, was still feeling the effect of recent corruption scandals when 33 people were banned for life in a case that involved 12 clubs.
“After the scandals in China attendances went down to 30% of the norm,” said Eaton. “China should be one of the powerhouses of world football but is not.”
“The core crime here is not the match-fix but betting fraud. The frauds are mostly taking place out of money from China. The amount of money gambled in China on sport or by other Chinese in south-east Asia is probably around $800 billion a year.
“They are betting on up to 5,000 sporting contests a week and these criminals are changing their tactics.”
“India should also be a powerhouse in world football but it is not, because of match-fixing in cricket. The spectators in India have now become very cynical about their sport because they’ve seen what has happened in their most popular sport and they apply it to other sports.”
Eaton once again urged governments to introduce legislation to treat widespread betting fraud as a criminal offense. He said more than 80 countries had suffered from match-fixing in the last five years and that it was naive only to blame the guilty players and officials.
“Law enforcement is so far behind – it’s got a long way to catch up globally and governments must take more responsibility and act together.”
“Everyone is rushing to blame the player – and there is blame – but the real perpetrators are the people who are the corruptors, who are making the betting fraud windfalls and this is where governments are failing.
“Governments are letting sport take the blame for the corruption of their own people by organised crime.”
“A lot of people are trying desperately to minimise the extent of corruption on the field of play. We need, from club level to FIFA itself, a joined-up common effort, searching for a silver bullet is not working.
“In the last five years there has been an upsurge in the prosecution of players and referees but we haven’t seen any stemming of match-fixing at all. Football is the most gambled-on sport and organised criminality is infiltrating into an area in which it does not belong.”
“Sport understands the problems but governments are waiting for sports to come up with the answer but this is a government problem. Not enough is being done by the people who can make a difference – governments of the world.”
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