FIFA and UEFA take on in match betting

By David Gold

March 30 – FIFA and UEFA have warned that they will clamp down on match fixing in friendly games by restricting in-game betting.

International and club friendlies are being increasingly manipulated by criminal gangs bribing players or referees to elicit the outcome they want.

In a recent example of such activities, Latvia, Bolivia, Estonia and Bulgaria travelled for two friendly games between the respective sides organised by the same group, in the same stadium and using the same officials, in which all seven goals were scored from the penalty spot.

Team officials asked FIFA and UEFA to investigate after they spotted the pattern.

FIFA’s legal director Marco Villiger spoke of the problems such groups have created.

“Live bets are a problem,” he said.

“We have to think about whether we should continue to offer such bets.”

UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino said that the events in Turkey “smell bad from miles and miles away.”

“This is something we will certainly address in the next discussion we’ll have with betting operators.”

Infantino said that football must adjust to the new reality where scams increasingly centre on isolated events within games, such as the next corner or throw in, raising the prospect of limits on in-game betting.

“It’s something we didn’t really focus on too much, since we were always focusing on the result,” he said.

“The criminal organisations are also getting more, let’s say, ready to tackle the measures we have introduced.”

European betting operators were open to discussing limits to such betting.

Freidrich Stickler, President of the European Lotteries umbrella group, said that “we should find a proper way of cooperating.”

Yet some regulated operators are concerned that their business may be restricted by any new measures.

“Most match-fixing scandals relate to pre-match betting, not live betting,” said Khalid Ali of the European Sports Security Association.

“If you do ban live betting all you are doing is creating a black market for these kinds of bets.”

Villiger confirmed that the match officials from the games in Turkey will have their cases heard at FIFA next week.

The Hungarian officials,·Kolos Lengyel, Krisztian Selmeczi and Janos Csak, have already been suspended by their country’s football federation for taking charge of the Estonia v Bulgaria game without permission.

And the three Bosnian officials, Sinisa Zrnic, Kenan Bajramovic and Riza Ridzozovic, were suspended by their federation.

Six other men are currently on trial in Germany on charges of manipulating matches across Europe, including a 2010 World Cup qualifier betwen Liechtenstein and Finland.

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