Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the - SportAccord

Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the integrity of sport
2. The role of the club and the federation: “institutional” fraud in
sport
Corruption at grassroots level is the concrete manifestation of corruption in sport. Its rules are easy
enough to understand: to rig a match, one needs to corrupt players, because it is they who win or lose
on the field. But it would be unwise to restrict oneself to approaching individual players only. The
process of corruption can also involve other people who are physically more remote from the pitch,
but who are broadly able to orchestrate corruption in sport.
Corruption can in fact be decided upon and organised at sports administration level, i.e. a club or
federation. In football for example, the most frequent cases of match-fixing involve the clubs
themselves. The scandals that shook the Turkish and Greek Football Championships in 2011 raised
questions about the clubs themselves. During the European Basketball Championship in Lithuania in
2011, it was a member of the Greek delegation who contacted the referees of two matches to try and
bribe them.
The classic model: rigging a match so that one’s team wins, “Buying a match”
This is the traditional type of match-fixing; it does not focus primarily on sports betting but rather
on the issue of a predetermined victory. The methods used to rig matches in these situations are the
same as those directly concerning sporting bets. Hence the interest of spending some time on them.
In some cases, victory is more important for a club or athlete than for their opponent. Consequently,
the latter may be offered financial compensation in exchange for their defeat. This may be the case for
example when a stronger team meets a supposedly weaker team. Even by losing, the weaker team can
earn money! This was the reasoning that enabled Olympique de Marseille to corrupt some
Valenciennes players in 1993. At the time, Marseille was fighting for the title and was due to play in
the European Cup Final several days later. The Marseilles management wanted to guarantee a win
so that their players could prepare mentally for the final against AC Milan. Jean-Pierre Bernes, the
Chairman of OM, aptly summed up the situation with the following words to a Valenciennes player:
“You’re going to lose anyway. So why not do it with 30,000 francs in your pocket?” The risk of
matches being rigged in this way increases as the end of the season approaches, if a team is still in
contention for promotion or victory in a championship, or is trying to avoid relegation, and the match
has no real significance for the opponent. In this case, sports betting is not the primary reason for
corruption, but this in no way prevents various people from taking advantage of the predetermination
of the result to amass gains on the betting market.
In practice, the corruption of an opponent can be effected in a number of ways. One method is to
contact the players directly, as was done by OM in 1993. Initial contact was made by a Marseille
player, Jean-Jacques Eydelie, who telephoned three strategic players in the Valenciennes team: central
defender Jacques Glassman (the man who revealed the affair), the team captain Jorge Burruchaga and
forward Christophe Robert. J-J Eydelie knew these three players, who had been his teammates earlier
in his career, at Nantes or Tours. Targeted players are approached first by a sportsperson or agent,
someone they know, then put in touch with a club manager or chairman, who will put the deal to them.
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