A pair of leading sports groups have accused the Gambling Commission of lacking the ‘appetite’ to help fight corruption in UK sport.
The Sports and Recreation Alliance (SRA) and the Sports Betting Group (SBG), whose members include the BHA, Football Association and England & Wales Cricket Board, have launched a scathing attack on the regulator, claiming that it also lacks the ‘resources and expertise’ to tackle integrity issues linked to gambling.
The allegations were made as part of the government’s consultation into the gambling industry, ahead of their revamp of the Gambling Act that is expected any day now.
The SRA and SBG claim that the Commission currently lacks the ‘strategic focus, power, resources, determination and expertise’ to effectively ward off the threat of sports betting corruption – citing a ‘lack of appetite’ to oversee criminal investigations into nefarious activities. That’s despite the fact that the regulator has a Sports Betting Integrity Unit already.
Instead, the Commission is referring cases to other law enforcement agencies – who don’t necessarily have the experience or ability to investigate such a specialist area.
One of the examples given was the growth in drone-based filming at UK racecourses, which are used to facilitate ‘court siding’ and hand in-play punters and edge on the bookmakers. It’s not thought any arrests have yet been made, despite a raft of incidents which included one drone crash-landing onto the track at Chepstow ahead of the prestigious Welsh Grand National.
Research has found that match fixing is on the rise in football, tennis, cricket, snooker and many other sports.
There’s nothing that the Gambling Commission can do about that, but it should have the powers to investigate the individuals involved in these cases that are thought to be operating in the background – snooker’s current corruption crisis, for example, is thought to run as deep as to have gangland involvement.
Another head-scratcher is the hundreds of bets placed by Brentford and England striker Ivan Toney while playing for numerous professional clubs. Given that it’s illegal for footballers to bet, how did Toney get away with it for a span of four years? What was the name on the account he was using? If it was his own, why wasn’t something done sooner?
It’s amazing how little is done to preserve sporting integrity in the UK compared to other countries around the world. In the United States, Interpol is in charge of identifying sports betting fraud – they have 150 different points of contact for corruption to be reported to and investigated. On the continent, Europol has a similar remit and breadth of scope.
Sportradar, an independent company that helps bookmakers to identify suspicious betting patterns, has reported that more than 1,000 sporting events were subject to match fixing in 2022. But what can they do about it beyond mere reporting?
The relevant bodies will no doubt investigate the players, teams and officials involved, but what about the individuals or groups benefitting from the inside information by placing winning bets? This is where the Commission’s anti-fraud unit should be stepping up to the plate.
Seeing Red
They may be slow to react on matters of sporting and betting integrity, but the Commission has shown plenty of appetite for punishing operators that have stepped out of line in recent months.
The latest to feel their wrath are the Kindred-owned brands 32Red Limited, which runs the 32Red bookmaking and casino site, and Platinum Gaming Limited, who operate Unibet in the UK. Both have been charged with social responsibility and anti-money laundering failures.
A cool £4.19 million fine has been dished out to 32Red, who were found to have failed to protect possible problem gamblers – including one individual who was allowed to lose £36,000 in just three days without any intervention. It was also found that 32Red continued to allow deposits and bets from those yet to respond to Source of Fund requests.
Platinum Gaming, meanwhile, failed to adequately ensure the welfare of their punters. One was able to sign up for a Unibet account despite being self-excluded from 32Red, while other failures to protect the potentially vulnerable have resulted in Platinum having to pay a near £3 million fine.
It takes the total amount raised by the Gambling Commission in fines to more than £50 million since March 2022.
