Ireland Needs To Wake Up To Match-fixing Corruption

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Saturday, February 13th, 2016 | Written by Stephen Smith

One of the biggest arguments against legalizing sports betting is that doing so can undermine the fairness of sports and the integrity of games by encouraging athletes to throw matches in return for kickbacks from bookies. The counter argument to that is that regulations can be put in place to stop this practice, and protect sports and bettors. A look at the situation in Ireland shows what can happen when those regulations are not adequately put into place.

Recently, Canadian journalist Declan Hill spent four years of his life digging into the world of match-fixing, and studying its effects on sports. Recently, he gave an interview that condemned Irish officials for turning a blind eye to sports fixing and allowing rampant fraud and criminal activities to take place within the industry. The journalist detailed serious abuses in numerous sports, including tennis, soccer and cricket. As he explained:

“I think Ireland’s sports are asleep at the wheel. The tennis match-fixing report was a serious and alarming wake-up call for Irish sports. This isn’t just a problem in tennis, this isn’t just a problem with football, this isn’t just a problem with cricket. This is a problem that all sports are going to face.”

In the Hands of the Leagues

In Ireland, sports are overseen by the Irish Sports Council. The group has developed policies against doping in order to ensure that professional Irish athletes do not use performance enhancing drugs to gain an advantage, but they have passed no policies regarding sports betting. Instead, they have left the matter in the hands of the three governing bodies for professional sports in the country: the GAA, the FAI and IRFU. Here is a rundown about how each league is dealing with sports fixing.

– The GAA. The Gaelic Athletic Association or GAA does have a gambling policy, much of which deals with the potential for athletes to become addicted to gambling. The regulations do make it clear that match fixing has consequences, stating that athletes found guilty of fixing games could face a minimum of an 8-game suspension or complete expulsion from GAA events.

– The FAI. The Football Association of Ireland or FAI has an integrity officer in position to investigate claims of match fixing and take action. The league has regulations in place regarding match fixing and gambling by players and holds training sessions on the topics for teams that have underage players.

– The IRFU. The Irish Rugby Football Union or IRFU participates in a World Rugby anti corruption program called Keep Rugby Onside that educates them about the penalties for match fixing.

Tennis Match-fixing Under Spotlight

Recently, secret files presented for viewing to the BBC asserted that 16 players who have featured in the top 50 tennis ranking over the past decade, including Grand Slam champions, have repeatedly come under scrutiny by the Tennis Integrity Unit. While Hill said that he was impressed by the investigation, he also said its findings were of little surprise.

“Tennis has had a problem with fixing going back a number of generations,” the investigative journalist said. “What happened in the last 10 years was that the gambling market, the globalized gambling market that numbers in the hundreds of billions of euro, is just flowing all over the world into leagues and into sports. And the easiest sport to fix is tennis. This has been a systemic problem for years now. As part of the report, they write about this, you couldn’t design a game easier to fix than tennis.”

Is It Enough?

The recent tennis match fixing scandals in Ireland was handled appropriately by Irish officials, and many bookmakers in the country are doing their part to stop corruption by using software to monitor for irregular betting patterns or abnormal or suspicious bets. Many bookmakers in the country are members of a non-profit professional organization that encourages responsible actions to prevent fraud.

Still, not all Irish bookmakers are on board, and Hill and other experts caution that this small minority could end up being a major problem for Irish sports. Hill and others have been calling upon the Irish Sports Council to play a greater role in preventing match fixing by establishing a standard that all leagues would need to adhere to in order to keep Irish sports honest. As Hill explains:

“Fair play to the ATP, at least they’ve got an integrity unit. I haven’t seen very many Irish take this credibly and really set up an integrity unit across their sport.”