Could the A-League become a plaything for match-fixers?

It wasn’t a big surprise to me when the FFA and the Victorian Police recently announced they had uncovered major match fixing in the Victorian Premier League.

Like a giant 3D puzzle the pieces slowly came together and revealed a carefully planned sting that had been hatching for over 12 months, involving out-of-contract English football professionals, Victorian football club officials and a major Singaporean criminal gambling syndicate.

How we did we get into this situation?

With the increased surveillance of European and Asian gambling activities, criminal gangs are now starting to target less populous, low-key and less scrutinised football leagues in countries like Australia, Taiwan and the Philippines.

Fixing and corruption in sport has a long history.

If you were to go to the site of the ancient Olympics in Greece, you would find outside the ruins of the stadium remains of statues to their Gods.

What most people wouldn’t know is those statues were paid for by athletes and coaches as punishment for being caught cheating at sport and fixing the results of Olympic events.

Sports corruption goes back thousands of years and some type of corruption will be with us for as long we continue to hold competitive sports and gamble on the outcome. It is simply a part of human nature.

The situation is compounded as we of this generation are facing something almost entirely new.

Criminal betting gangs have worldwide access to sophisticated networked equipment and instantaneous data and betting information, which previous generations hadn’t even dreamt of.

The key to the new form of fixing is globalisation. In the last ten years, the sports gambling market has – like the music and travel industry – been utterly transformed.

Now, gamblers in any part of the world can place a bet on almost any professional sports event in almost any country of the world.

The betting agencies themselves are thinking up new ways to take bets from punters every day, but at the same time presenting illegal gamblers more avenues to operate with limited detection.

It is a contemporary form of match-fixing that involves referees, players and team officials. To do that in a contested professional world requires a great deal of secrecy, betting coordination and ultimately dishonesty and greed.

Major football leagues in Italy, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and Finland have all had well publicised scandals linked to fixed matches.

This previous summer, Norway had its own taste of the infamy the fixers can bring to a league when matches were being fixed in their third division.

Football leagues in Australia, where wages are relatively low and audits and checks of officials’ activities are relatively lax, are providing the opportunities for gambling syndicates to strike.

The Victorian Police Commissioner told a recent ASADA enquiry into football match fixing earlier this year there was a “significant increase” in betting on the A-League last season.

Every A-League game was attracting a very large amount of offshore betting, mainly in Asia.

Two matches in particular involving Melbourne Victory – against Adelaide United and Perth Glory in December 2012 – carried around $50 million USD in wagers on the outcome of each game.

One Hong Kong bookmaker alone took bets worth $49 million on the December 2012 A-League game involving Victory and Adelaide.

This was $7 million more than placed with the same bookie on that weekend for the Manchester United versus Manchester City derby in the English Premier League.

The FFA CEO David Gallop replied at the time, “As far as we are aware, and we have been in touch with VicPol, there are no A-League matches under investigation.”

However ASADA and VicPol are known to have gone through the betting records of a number of Asian bookmakers and a thorough review of the performance of the A-League referees and match officials.

Federal Justice Minister Jason Clare also confirmed at least one possible case of A-League match-fixing was being investigated.

ASADA subsequently confirmed A-League games were being investigated and referred to police, so it’s surprising Gallop was not aware of it when interviewed.

The report also mentioned some very large, last-minute bets placed on the games and raised the fact that Perth Glory’s captain and best player, Liam Miller, withdrew from the Victory game at the very last minute because of a late injury sustained during the pre-match warm up.

As part of the report by Chris Eaton, former Head of Security at FIFA and current director of integrity for the International Centre for Sports Security, it highlighted how Asia’s betting market is increasingly turning to Australia.

“The favourable time zone also makes it desirable to Asian punters. It certainly highlights the vulnerability of Australian sport in Asia,” he told Fairfax Media.

David Gallop later said Australian football and the A-League had been exonerated by Eaton’s report from allegations of match-fixing and drug use.

Adelaide United defender Jon McKain said Adelaide’s players were unaware of the amount of money bet on the Victory match until it was reported in the press and he thought it was “amazing that so much money is being thrown around on A-League matches”.

“It’s becoming more than just coming to a game and watching; people can come and think about making money. They are . . . betting on everything – the first corner kick, throw-ins, fouls, there’s so much you can bet on…

“But as players, that’s not our focus. If people want to do that it’s their livelihood and they can choose what they want to do. It’s a bit frightening to get that kind of money in one game.”

In the lead up to season nine of the A-League, Gallop has reiterated his warning to A-League players, coaches and officials not to tempt fate:

“If there are people engaging in this kind of conduct then they need to be penalised severely and weeded out.”

International surveillance agency Sportradar, who alerted the FFA about the recent match fixing in the VPL, will continue to monitor betting on the A-League.

“There’s no doubt there are general concerns for Australian sports. If you were to be involved in match fixing or taking of performance enhancing substances then you will meet the full force of the penalties that are available to the FFA.

“Where things are difficult to detect there need to be severe penalties in place and a major deterrence factor message sent to all.”

Indeed, these things are very hard to detect and prevent beforehand, Mr Gallop, and it’s usually a case of taking limited action after the event, when the money has all but disappeared and the damage has already been done.