It is going back a few years now, but I remember being told to bet on a specific game in the Barclays Premier League. I was told a heavy defeat for one side was guaranteed. It was an end-of-the-season fixture, with nothing much resting on it. I didn’t, but was not surprised at all when the scores rolled in, and, sure enough, there had been a hammering.
Those involved, it turned out, had not bet substantial sums on the outcome — a win for this team, a defeat for that — but on the number of goals that would be scored. Back then, such spread betting was a relatively new phenomenon. Now, though, it is one of the cornerstones of the gambling market.
You can bet on anything. The time of the first throw-in, the first corner, or the first booking — just what Sam Sodje, the former Portsmouth player, boasted he could arrange to an undercover newspaper reporter. It should be no surprise that players farther down the league, where money is not quite so free, or those at the end of their contracts and in search of a nest egg, are tempted to make themselves a nice profit by gambling on a market they control. On the surface, spot-fixing is to match-fixing what stealing a wallet is to robbing a bank. The sums involved are tiny and they do not necessarily affect the result. Only one player needs to be bought; it does not require mass participation. The idea of a game being for sale is a great deal more troubling.
But it is still a huge problem for football’s authorities, and one that must be dealt with swiftly. There need to be controls in place. It seems baffling that bookmakers even decide to take bets on these things, because they are just so easy to manipulate.
Players may well see it as a victimless crime. That is simply not the case. It challenges the integrity of the game.
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