It would be naive to believe that football is beyondcorrupting, or to doubt that the allegations by police investigators in theNetherlands are anything but the smallest ripples on an enormous global pond.
Of course football is corruptible, just as baseball or horseracing. Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, fearsthat illegal betting is today the greatest polluter across a sporting industrynow believed to turn over $140 billion a year.
Europol said Monday in The Hague that a 19-monthinvestigation into match-fixing had found 680 matches across the globe that itdeemed suspicious. But the cases that were talked have more than a familiarring. The bulk of them appear to be a collation of fixes, notably in Germany,Finland, Slovakia and Hungary, that have run their course and been copiouslyreported on.
At the International Herald Tribune’s Sports Business Summitmeeting last April in Istanbul “ at the same time that leading figures inTurkish football were jailed on suspicion of match-fixing “ guests includedRonald Noble, the secretary general of Interpol, the international policeorganisation.
What Noble could tell us was dwarfed by what he could notbecause he is a working police officer, with access to ongoing criminalinvestigations. Those investigations are not just in football, where he has amandate to work with FIFA, the world governing body of football, to helpprevent match-tampering.
Football, as popular in Asia as it is anywhere else, lendsitself to that crime.
In Singapore, Malaysia, China or wherever, the cartels canoperate without being in the same time zone or on the same continent as wherethe matches are being played. Many of those brought to trial these days tend tobe through media investigation “ for example, the Pakistani cricketers caughtby British journalists posing as fixers.
Figures are bandied about that could make us dizzy. Noble,the Interpol chief, equates global gambling revenue to be on a par with that ofCoca-Cola. Accountants suggest $1 trillion a year “ more than $3 billion a day“ is spent on sports.
Now here is a funny thing. Football is arguably the mostwidely broadcast sport that people play. This week, there are 40 internationalfriendly matches, plus the semifinals of the African Cup of Nations, and allthe club games around the world. Next week, the Champions League is renewed.
Itchy fingers will bet on those, and not only on the finalscores. Lest anyone forget, television ads, stadium surrounds and even theshirts of many players will drum it into spectators.
The sport is on the run from betting manipulation, yet ateam as illustrious and as wealthy as Real Madrid carries the logo of a bettingcompany on its jersey. The message is that the game is synonymous withgambling.
