Sports betting: Age of complacency over as sport wakes up to gambling risk

Governing bodies in every major sport now accept that betting corruption represents a clear and present danger, writes Nick Harris

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The biggest threat to British sport from betting-related corruption, aside from would-be "fixers" themselves, used to be complacency.

Since the Swan-Kay-Lane football match-fixing case of 1965 led to prison terms for those involved, there has not been any single massive and proven scam in the UK that has led to multiple criminal prosecutions.

Admittedly some floodlights went out at the behest of Asian swindlers (among other football cases), and a snooker player has been caught for bragging he can fix games and banned (among other snooker cases), and horseracing has been through the mill (more than once), but there has not been a nailed-on conviction of a high-profile personality that echoed around the world.

So complacency might have been a viable option. Yet with governing bodies from every major sport acknowledging today in The Independent's news pages that gambling presents as clear and present a danger as doping, that is no longer the case.

The governing bodies want tighter regulations. They want more powers to monitor bookmakers, and especially the participants who take part in the games we watch. As Tim Payton, a spokesman for a coalition of all the major governing bodies, says: "Sports bodies would like to see the Gambling Commission undertake random audits of sports bets, looking for unusual patterns and evidence of betting by sports people".

The governing bodies want more funding to fight the fight, and they know that unless they act, they leave themselves exposed to the charge that they did not do enough to prevent Britain's own version of a Cronje/Hoyzer-esque scandal.

But a threat still remains from the lack of jurisdiction that governing bodies and the Gambling Commission have to act beyond British shores. And it is now incumbent on government, pushed by the country's leading sports, to make fresh progress in this area too.

It matters, and it matters because without such powers then cases like Norwich versus Derby in the Championship last October – when Derby won 2-1 amid allegations of huge amounts of money placed in irregular fashion on Asian betting exchanges – will not be investigated properly.

The FA opened an investigation, then closed it in December, assuring the public: "Based on the information gathered as a result of detailed enquiries, there is no evidence to suggest any irregularities around the game. The FA received assistance from the Gambling Commission and individual UK bookmakers, who confirmed that no suspicious activity took place on their markets around the match at Carrow Road."

What the FA did not say is that it was not able to establish even what bets had been struck, or where, because it had no jurisdiction to do so. It asked the commission. The commission has no jurisdiction, either. In other words, the GC asked some questions of Asian betting firms, got no useful answers and stopped asking. It had no powers to get answers.

The Norwich case only came to public attention because two Norwich MPs, Ian Gibson and Norman Lamb, raised the matter in Parliament and forced disclosure of it as a named case.

Now The Independent can reveal that Gibson met yesterday with the Gambling Commission's director of regulation, Nick Tofiluk, and Tofiluk conceded, for the first time, how powerless the organisation remains in looking beyond Britain.

"Mr Tofiluk told me if things happen in this country, it's reasonably easy to make connections, but for something like the Norwich game, there's not a lot they can do," Gibson said. "There is some suggestion that betting on the Norwich game was conducted via China but they [the GC] can't get any details. This particular investigation unit [at the GC] has been going for something like a year and to some extent they're still flying by the seat of their pants.

"They realise and admit gambling is a serious problem. They can't give us more information of what might have happened on Norwich-Derby betting, and they cannot prevent in-game betting. But they know that Asian syndicates capable of a sting already exist.

"They effectively operate in betting havens and what concerns me is that there are no plans yet, in any serious way, to move towards cross-border cooperation on these issues in Europe, let alone Asia. I hope at least we now have the platform for a debate."

Only this week Gibson tabled a question in Parliament asking the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport "what discussions he has had with the Football Association on plans for a pan-European approach to the subject of football match-fixing". The Sports Minister, Gerry Sutcliffe, replied that DCMS officials regularly meet sports bodies "to discuss a number of issues. The general subject of integrity in sports betting has been discussed during those meetings".

They are about to become more frequent, and more wide-ranging.

Snooker: Stephen Maguire v Jamie Burnett

World Snooker and the Gambling Commission are both continuing to investigate "unusual" betting patterns on the first-round match between Stephen Maguire and Jamie Burnett at the UK Championship in December after bookmakers suspected match-fixing. Most bookies stopped taking bets more than a day before the game because of a stream of large wagers on a 9-3 score in Maguire's favour. That happened. Victor Chandler said it saw online accounts opened just to place bets on 9-3, and yet no money at all on 9-2 or 9-4. The players deny wrongdoing, with Jamie Burnett saying: "To my knowledge nobody has ever done anything. Snooker is too important... I play to win all the time. If anybody's got anything to say about it, then I'm willing to talk to them."

Football: Bury v Accrington Stanley

Several high-street bookmaking chains, including William Hill and Coral, closed their books after seeing "an unusual amount of money" in cash bets placed in their shops on Bury beating Accrington in League Two on 3 May 2008. Bury subsequently won the match 2-0, with Andy Bishop scoring both, a 22nd-minute penalty, and another goal just before half-time. The Football Association was aware of the odd betting patterns on the Friday before the Saturday game, and after the game it started an investigation which remains open and ongoing 10 months later. Sources expect "an outcome" some time.

Tennis: Martin Vassallo Arguello v Nikolay Davydenko

The ATP began a match-fixing investigation after irregular betting patterns on Nikolay Davydenko's match with Martin Vassallo Arguello of Argentina at a tournament in Poland in August 2007. Some £4m was wagered via the online exchange Betfair alone, around 10 times the expected amount, and much of it on underdog Arguello, even after he lost the first set. He won in three when Davydenko retired injured. Betfair deemed the betting patterns so strange they voided all bets. The longest match-fixing inquiry in tennis history unfolded. On 11 September 2008, both players were cleared of match-fixing, and nobody accused of wrongdoing.