Betting scandals galore

So after my recent post on the NBA scandal, there are a few more scandals on the horizon.

Turkish football

The 'best' one has to be the Turkish football referee scandal. It seems that despite the advent of legalised sports betting in the country, nobody thought to check if the officiators of the country's most popular sport should be checked to see if they had any betting accounts! That's a pretty fundamental piece of legalised betting - bring in rules banning players and officials from betting on the sport they are playing, then actually check they are complying. While the more streetwise ones will find ways to mask their activity, none of this lot made any attempt at all to hide their betting habits!

149 referees and assistant referees have been suspended, 371 of 571 match officials were found to have betting accounts, with over 150 actively using them. Seven head referees and 15 assistants in the Super Lig were caught in the net. Like most betting accounts, many were only used once, 42 of them had bet on over 1,000 football matches, while one official was found to have placed 18,227 bets, more than 10 bets per today over the course of the analysed period - that's proper addiction territory. 'Several' referees were found to have wagered on matches they were in charge of.

Every year there seems to be plenty of reasons to question the integrity of Turkish football - most of us thought it was brown paper bags from the super clubs, now there is genuine reason to doubt that is the only source of integrity failure.

"There is a moral crisis in Turkish football. There is no such thing as structure. The fundamental problem at the core of Turkish football is an ethical one," TFF president Ibrahim Haciosmanoglu told CNN on Friday.

The nay-sayers will always say permitting sports betting creates these problems - but does it? Yes it increases the profile of the popular pastime but what it also does is bring such misdemeanours into the public eye. Without the proper surveillance attached to licensed sports betting, these things are hidden from the authorities - and many, many examples of sports corruption have come via the black market side of the industry, where stewards and investigators have no sight of the activity at all.

UFC

UFC had its own betting scandal last weekend, where one fighter obviously decided he wasn't getting enough money to get his face kicked in...

Integrity services flagged the bout between Isaac Dulgarian and Yadier del Valle in advance of the contest, but bizarrely the organisers didn't cancel it. Dulgurian was originally a 2/5 favourite (71% chance) but heavy support for del Valle moved the market considerably and the money flow didn't slow down - a massive red flag that something is bent. Some firms pulled the market in the hours before the bout.

Unsurprisingly, Dulgurian lost in the opening round by submission. Two days later, he was 'released' by the UFC.

Spot-fixing - you will never, ever be able to stop it

According to this report , IPL tournaments so far have been rife with spot-fixing - that is fixing minor elements of the game - runs in a single over, number of wides bowled etc. The curious part of that article is that the Income Tax department are supposed to have found these crimes. What idiot would be stupid enough to put down 'big wad of cash handed to me by bookie' as a source of income? Backhanders for sportsmen, particularly in a celebrity- and cricket-obsessed culture like India are not rare. They could come from anything like turning up to open someone's new business (not a sponsor, but a 'friend of a friend' arrangement), to being a guest at some devoted fan's dinner party etc. The opportunities are always there, and there will always be people trying to become friends with players and their entourage - that is human nature. This form of match-fixing (and it's not really fixing a match, just a minor element of it) is very hard to prove, but also, ...

lay the field - my favourite racing strategy

Dabbling with laying the field in-running at various prices today, not just one price, but several in the same race. Got several matched in the previous race at Brighton, then this race came along at Nottingham. Such a long straight at Nottingham makes punters often over-react and think the finish line is closer than it actually is. As you can see by the number of bets matched, there was plenty of volatility in this in-play market. It's rare you'll get a complete wipe-out with one horse getting matched at all levels, but it can happen, so don't give yourself too much risk...

It's all gone Pete Tong at Betfair!

The Christmas Hurdle from Leopardstown, a good Grade 2 race during the holiday period. But now it will go into history as the race which brought Betfair down. Over £21m at odds of 29 available on Voler La Vedette in-running - that's a potential liability of over £500m. You might think that's a bit suspicious, something's fishy, especially with the horse starting at a Betfair SP of 2.96. Well, this wasn't a horse being stopped by a jockey either - the bloody horse won! Look at what was matched at 29. Split that in half and multiply by 28 for the actual liability for the layer(s). (Matched amounts always shown as double the backers' stake, never counts the layers' risk). There's no way a Betfair client would have £600m+ in their account. Maybe £20 or even £50m from the massive syndicates who regard(ed) Betfair as safer than any bank, but not £600m. So the error has to be something technical. However, rumour has it, a helpdesk reply (not gospel, natur...

Sport is made for betting

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