Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the - SportAccord

Sports betting and corruption: How to preserve the integrity of sport
In practical terms, the Asian betting market is concentrated around a number of betting sites that serve
as a vehicle for an impressive number of bets. The monetary weight of these sites greatly exceeds that
of the European sports betting market. In continental China, the ratio of legal bets (i.e. sports betting
operated by the state lottery organisations) to illegal bets is 1:10. In 2007, the China Center for Lottery
Studies estimated the illegal market at close to 7 billion.
The pyramid structure of Asian betting
These few Asian sites represent the overground section of a vast pyramid-shaped illegal betting
network extending throughout Eastern Asia. To understand the development of this system, we need to
go back to the Colonial Era of the Western powers, during which many populations - particularly
Chinese - were called on to work in Hong Kong and South East Asia. This diaspora was established on
an ongoing basis and favoured the growth of the Triads (Chinese Mafia) in South East Asia, followed
by the development of street sports betting networks in the second half of the 20th Century. In many
Asian countries, gambling is a strongly-rooted activity. For example the Chinese New Year is often an
occasion for visiting a casino en famille and placing all manner of bets.
The street networks are made up of many runners, men of the streets, who take bets from the local
population (by telephone or face-to-face) and transfer them to regional bookmakers who manage the
betting finances by placing bets themselves with supra-regional betting houses operating as small scale
local financial centres. These physical betting markets have now largely been replaced by Internet
sites. And regional bookmakers manage all the bets and hedge their risk by betting on Asian online
sites. These sites have therefore always been accustomed to accepting very large bets because they are
the amalgamation of thousands of street bets that come through in the form of one combined bet,
which can be exceedingly large.
On the street, each individual gambler must be introduced and vouched for by a referee, a mechanism
current in illegal betting networks (e.g. in the USA) and that facilitates transactions. Betting on credit
therefore becomes possible, but the risk exists that violence will be used if payment is slow in being
made. This betting culture is officially illegal in these countries, but nevertheless very widespread.
Bets are often taken over the telephone and payments are made either in cash or by a bank transaction.
Gamblers open bank accounts and give the details to the bookmaker, who in exchange gives them a
telephone number they can use to place their bets. Winnings are paid out two to three days after the
event.
This system has resulted in a highly concentrated betting site market, because a small number of sites
handle the vast majority of funds. These sites offer a particularly high rate of return to the player
(around 97%), the low margin being offset by the very high volume of bets. By avoiding all
regulation, these operators are able to offer an extremely wide range of competitions and types of bet,
and accept particularly large bets.
According to the estimate of an expert on sports betting activity, an Asian site may accept up to about
20,000 on a single client account on a match in the Romanian Football Championship (as against a
few hundred euro for a European operator). For Belgian Championship matches, Asian operators will
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