Zona de Azar USA – Betting Integrity… What Does it Mean? What Should it Mean?

USA.- April 16th 2019 www.zonadeazar.com What is Betting Integrity? Integrity is described as “the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles” but what does it mean from a betting sense?

Match Fixing

A common perception when somebody hears the term “betting integrity” is in relation to match fixing, and the fight to stop sports match/event outcomes being manipulated for betting purposes. For as long as there has been gambling, match fixing has existed and in numerous forms. Some examples are below:

– Jack Hillman trying to “pay off” Nottingham Forest players to take it easy on his Burnley team looking to avoid relegation in the 1899/1900 football season.[1]

– Baseball team Chicago White Sox allegedly throwing the 1919 World Series. [2]

– Jimmy Gauld and his betting syndicate fixing football matches in the 1960’s (Gauld and others received prison time for their venture, but that is a topic for another day!)[3]

– Former South African cricket captain, Hansie Cronje was banned for life from cricket in 2000 for match fixing activity. [4]

– Snooker player Stephen Lee was banned for 12 years in 2013 for fixing matches at the UK Championship, among other tournaments. [5]

– Argentinian tennis player Nicolas Kicker became the highest ranked tennis player banned for match fixing in 2018, relating to matches played in 2015. [6]

As you can see from the examples above, it isn’t just “lower level” sport at risk of match fixing, but elite level sport too. Teammates of Hansie Cronje testified that, during a team meeting in Mumbai in 1996, their former skipper had offered them $250,000 to throw a One Day International against India.

Spot Fixing

Another teammate of Cronje’s, Herschelle Gibbs, admitted that Cronje had paid him $15,000 to score less than 20 runs in a match against India. This brings us onto the second most common perception of betting integrity in sport, “Spot Fixing”. Spot fixing relates to specific events within a match which don’t necessarily decide its outcome. Spot fixing is generally accepted as a more recent occurrence, mainly due to the change in the landscape of betting from the 1990’s onwards, nonetheless there are some historic and high-profile examples below:

– Following his retirement, former Southampton footballer, Matthew Le Tissier admitted he attempted to kick the ball out of play to successfully win a bet. The betting was on a match in 1995 using the fast-rising spread betting option. [7]

– Arguably the most famous example of spot fixing is the Pakistan cricketers Mohammed Asif, Mohammed Amir and Salman Butt. The players were given 7, 5 and 10 year bans respectively in 2011 for their part in fixing when certain balls bowled would be no balls. All 3 players also received prison sentences in relation to the incident, Butt receiving the longest, of 30 months.[8]

– Cricket also suffered again with the Westfield-Kaneria case, when Mervyn Westfield pleaded guilty to spot fixing a Pro40 match in 2009. He was given a 5-year ban by the ECB and spent 8 weeks in prison. Danesh Kaneria, his teammate at the time, was banned for life from cricket for orchestrating the fix.[9]

– Lincoln City defender Bradley Wood was banned for 6 years by the Football Association for spot fixing offences in two of Lincoln City’s matches in their historic run to The FA Cup quarter finals in the 2016/17 season. Wood received yellow cards deliberately in the two matches.[10]

With so many markets available on sport at all levels, spot fixing is becoming a much more serious problem in sport. Whether it being deliberately getting booked in a football match, losing the first set before winning the next two to beat the more inferior opponent in a tennis match or an American Football running back deliberately (or mystically picking up an injury) running under his predicted yards. Thus, enabling bettors to profit in the over/unders market.

When is inside information actually inside information?

Along with the match and spot fixing, which are, potentially the most serious examples of Betting Integrity issues, inside information and participant breaches also play a role in the day to day protection of each sports integrity. Inside information is arguably the most polarising point in Betting Integrity, where is the line drawn between a “tip”, “being in the know” or someone “exploiting their position within the sport”? The easiest way to look at it is, what information is in the public domain? If it’s public domain information that a team is struggling to pay the wages of their players and are likely to play a youth team in their fixture at the weekend and the operators price the teams up normally, it is not inside information for punters to take advantage of this. However, in the same scenario if that information is only known to club personnel and leaks out, this is inside information and will (rightly so) be investigated.

Participants falling foul

Participant breaches are becoming a more regular occurrence within sport, as sports themselves make their rules more robust. A participant breach is when a participant of sport has breached rules specific to that sport, whether it be betting on their own competitions, or in the majority of cases betting on their own sport in any capacity. These robust betting rules by sports are crucial to protecting the way their sports are perceived, and in the cases of the sports with blanket bans, making it very easy for participants to follow.

What is being done?

Betting operators hold the key to protecting sport from all of these offences, by being responsible about the markets they offer, as well as vigilant enough to notice abnormalities that need to be investigated by sport and potentially law enforcement. Without the operator’s data or information, sport would have no visibility into any problem (if there is one) within their sport. In some cases, newspaper stings, or similar will enable a sport to start an investigation (and in some cases prosecute), but betting data is the most accurate and effective way for sports to police themselves and determine the correct penalty for anyone involved in breaching these rules.

When it relates to match fixing or spot fixing, bodies like ESSA play a huge role. ESSA enable operators to share information about potential issues within sporting events prior to sharing them with sports or law enforcement. This enables more clarity about the scope of the problem the event/sport may be facing. Whilst ESSA currently have 27 members, I would encourage any operators that aren’t yet part of this to consider becoming part of the body. The more eyes working together on noticing any potential issues for sport is beneficial for everyone working for cleaner sport.[11]

What can we all do better?

I have spent 8 plus years in the betting industry and 5 years within sport at The Football Association and the British Horseracing Authority, dealing with cases just like the ones above and have seen many changes over that period. There has been a significant focus on improving the relationships between sport, betting operators, regulators and law enforcement across not just in a local sense, but worldwide through The Sports Betting Integrity Forum[12]. SBIF bring together all stakeholders to share best practice and discuss current and future issues in the sports betting integrity landscape. Hopefully the improved relationships will enable Sports with less betting experience within their ranks to lean on the industry for advice and guidance when looking at the betting data provided. Which in turn, will hopefully lead to every Sport having a fighting chance to get the right penalties for participants involved in betting integrity wrongdoing.

The improvement in betting integrity processes across operators and sports alike have been huge over the last ten years. However, there is a long way to go for betting integrity to be taken as seriously as it should be. Not only internally within the industry but externally too. It cannot be right that, in the UK for example, we have only seen one person ever criminally convicted under the Gambling Act for betting integrity related activity (bearing in mind that Gambling Act was introduced almost 14 years ago to the day of writing).[13] But as said on the Jimmy Gauld example above, that topic is probably one for another day!

It’s a tough task ahead of us all to keep the sports we love clean, but it’s certainly one I and countless others won’t be giving up on anytime soon.

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/roll-call-of-shame-the-history-of-british-match-fixing-1611272.html

[2] https://www.history.com/news/the-black-sox-baseball-scandal-95-years-ago

[3] https://www.goal.com/en-sg/slideshow/2158/4/title/footballers-who-fell-foul-of-the-law

[4] http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/story/93086.html

[5] https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/sep/25/stephen-lee-match-fixing-guilty

[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/sports/nicolas-kicker-match-fixing.html

[7] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/southampton/6130280/Matthew-Le-Tissier-admits-being-part-of-attempted-betting-scam-at-Southampton.html

[8] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2016/07/12/pakistan-spot-fixing-shame-the-inside-story-on-the-day-the-home/

[9] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/9009383/Mervyn-Westfield-spot-fixing-scandal-a-timeline.html

[10] https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/43829525

[11] http://www.eu-ssa.org/

[12] https://www.sbif.uk/home.aspx

[13] https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/news-action-and-statistics/news/2015/Greyhound-trainer-jailed-for-cheating-at-gambling.aspx

Edited by: Zona de Azar Press www.zonadeazar.com