Is Europe Finally Serious About Fixing Its Match-Fixing Crisis?

World of Crime begins a new season on Organized Crime and Football by looking into whether UEFA has really made progress in cracking down on match-fixing rings in top European leagues.

This article is part of World of Crime’s new season, Organized Crime and Football, which will investigate match-fixing, corruption, illegal gambling and organized crime connections to football from July to August 2024.

Future articles in the series will investigate the rise of shady betting sponsors in the English Premier League; how Mexican cartels might trouble the 2026 World Cup; why Malta is blocking regulations to curb match-fixing in Europe; whether African football federation presidents have too much power; and how illegal gambling syndicates seek to influence matches in football, handball, badminton and even pétanque.

A 12-0 result should raise some red flags. If it was a one-off occurrence, one could complain about vastly different transfer budgets, or the unequal allocation of TV revenues, or any of the many other bugbears football fans like to gripe about. 

But a single 12-0 result may not have provided a cause for suspicion.

After all, other more lopsided disasters have happened. Australia shellacked American Samoa 31-0 during a World Cup qualifier. and Preston North End beat Hyde United by 26-0 in England.

Both were fairly unusual. The Australia game helped the country to join the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) to play better competition instead of small Oceania islands. And the Preston North End-Hyde United game happened in 1887.

Still, one 12-0 result could have been overlooked. But TWO 12-0 results in the same season of Armenia’s second division, along with other results of 9-2, 8-2, 8-1, and 8-0 was too much to swallow.

In 2020, the country’s football association (FA) suspended its entire second division, handed down lifetime bans to 45 people, and found the involvement of players, coaches and club owners, including citizens of Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, and Belarus.

This marked one of the largest match-fixing rings in European history.

It also coincided with the beginning of a period in which the European footballing body has sought to really clean up the game.

Has Europe really made progress?

With the UEFA Euro 2024 about to kick off, a quick jaunt around the footballing world shows that match-fixing and corruption continue to plague the game.

Three players from Australia’s A-League were recently charged for betting corruption after they allegedly manipulated yellow cards. The former head of Iran’s referees’ committee has also been arrested for seemingly accepting bribes to throw matches. 

Most spectacularly, Ugandan football chief Moses Magogo was among eight officials sanctioned by the US State Department in May 2024. Magogo has been plagued by corruption scandals, including illegally selling World Cup tickets intended to be sold to Ugandan fans. For this, he was suspended for just two months by FIFA. 

But what about Europe? Surely the frenzy around Euro 2024, one of the most high-profile football tournaments outside the World Cup, should attract its fair share of match-fixing and corruption?

There may be some signs of hope.

Starlizard, an industry leader in sports betting analytics, found that in 2023, 0.18% of all games played in the UEFA region, covering Europe and a few adjacent nations, were flagged on suspicion of potential manipulation. This was below the global average of 0.26% and far less than the 0.47% of Asian matches and 0.52% of all international fixtures that were similarly flagged.

However, UEFA still accounted for the vast majority of suspicious matches played, although it must be noted that conditions allowed for a far greater number of matches played in Europe to be scrutinized by anti-corruption analytics. 

Starlizard Graphic for suspicious matches played worldwide from 2017 to 2013. Source: Starlizard.

For Affy Sheikh, director of Starlizard Integrity Analytics, the jury’s still out.

“I’m not sure the data is sufficient to reach any sort of meaningful conclusion. In recent years, the UEFA region percentage has consistently been below that of other regions, but I’m not sure we can infer ‘progress’ as such,” he told World of Crime. 

One of Europe’s most experienced sports corruption prosecutors is more optimistic.

Over the last four to five years, both UEFA and specific member nations have made strong strides, says Guy Reinenbergh, national coordinator for sports fraud for Belgium’s federal police.

He notes the increased appearance of integrity officers within UEFA’s ranks and the ways in which UEFA has collaborated with Europol, Interpol, and the Group of Copenhagen, a network of countries aiming to implement the Macolin Convention, a landmark treaty to prevent and detect match-fixing in Europe.

“Even now during Euro 2024,” explains Reinenbergh, “there are large-scale ongoing operations against match-fixing and spot-fixing. But you won’t hear about it, this will only be communicated after the tournament.” 

Sheikh explained that UEFA has been proactive in taking steps to help fight match-fixing, including by helping member associations carry out investigations. However, there are several other helpful factors. European players are well-paid, compared to the global average, and European countries tend to score well on global corruption indexes.

“Maybe European football is a tougher nut to crack,” said Sheikh. 

So has this strong European attitude led to any results?

Yes. There have been a number of successes based on sustained investigations and international cooperation within Europe. 

Spain, Andorra and Gibraltar

In 2023, a major breakthrough occurred when Spanish authorities, supported by Europol, arrested 23 individuals involved in a sophisticated match-fixing network that manipulated games across the Spanish, Andorran, and Gibraltar leagues. 

This network, which included players and club staff, strategically placed bets through a web of intermediaries at bookmakers. This case, following a similar crackdown in 2021, underscored the persistence of match-fixing in European football and highlighted UEFA's ongoing efforts to combat corruption through stringent investigations and international cooperation.

KF Skenderbeu, Albania

Despite now being a few years old, the case of Albanian club KF Skenderbeu remains highly influential. In 2016, UEFA launched an investigation into the club following numerous reports of suspicious betting patterns in their matches. The investigation revealed that Skenderbeu had been involved in orchestrating match-fixing on a large scale over several seasons.

As a result of these findings, in 2018, UEFA imposed an unprecedented ten-year ban on KF Skenderbeu from all UEFA competitions, along with a record fine of one million euros. The decision was based on extensive evidence, including a detailed analysis of betting patterns and match footage, which demonstrated a consistent and deliberate effort to manipulate match outcomes.

The club appealed the decision, but the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) upheld UEFA's sanctions in 2019. CAS confirmed that the evidence presented by UEFA was overwhelming and that the club's actions had severely undermined the integrity of football.

This zero-tolerance approach has since grown to encompass entire leagues or divisions. 

So are we out of the woods?

Not remotely. Despite the Spanish success, several ongoing investigations show that match-fixing remains rampant in wealthy leagues.

An excellent article by Josimar, an investigative journalism magazine dedicated to football, revealed the ugly truth earlier this month. 

The Spanish case only revealed further match-fixing connections in important leagues, especially Greece. An Interpol report found that an illegal betting ring had involved a worrying number of clubs, five from Greek’s top Super League 1 and 13 more in Super League 2. Worse, an anonymous letter sent to Greece’s Supreme Court alleged that at least five Super League 1 club owners were directly placing bets.

Interpol and Europol have been investigating these links for two years, but in Greece, little appears to have been done.

“Greek football has simply played on with games involving clubs under suspicion offered for live betting around the world including by illegal and unregulated betting operators, which do not share information on potential fixed matches with sports bodies or law enforcement,” wrote Josimar. 

So is UEFA fighting alone?

Internally, no. The organisation has seen considerable support from some countries, especially Spain, Belgium and Germany, experts interviewed for this story agreed. More European nations are also expected to soon ratify the Macolin Convention, a 2014 treaty specifically designed to investigate, prevent and punish match-fixing,

But there is still significant room for improvement within the European bloc. Besides the case of Greece above, other problems have hampered the crackdown on match-fixing. Much like the Spanish investigation led to the Greek revelations, further investigations have pointed to related match-fixing allegations in Austria, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, according to Josimar. 

And here is where troubles can be seen. The amount of resources and information-sharing within the European sports fraud infrastructure needs to improve. Even at the national level, World of Crime research found that certain European countries that had yet to ratify the Macolin Convention dedicated significantly less budgets to sports fraud. Many prosecutors, police investigators and other law enforcement officials investigating match-fixing do not get any extra budget or salary to do so, several interviewees stated.

And the problem of cooperation doesn’t end there. If UEFA has cracked down on match-fixing, those behind this crime have focused on other regions as well as international matches, especially friendlies.

Starlizard’s research showed that 0.52% of international matches it surveyed in 2023 were flagged as suspicions, as well as 0.47% of matches played in Asian leagues. 

“Lower-tier leagues in several Asian countries and Africa continue to experience issues as well. Additionally, several friendly matches on the European continent have been fixed, which fall outside the jurisdiction of both UEFA and FIFA,” explained Chris Rasmussen, a lecturer in sports betting integrity at the University of New Haven and financial crime prevention specialist.

According to him, fixers are not married to any one league, they exploit any available opportunity, regardless of whether the tournaments fall under FIFA, UEFA, or other organizations.

“By targeting a wide range of matches, they increase their chances of flying under the radar, fixing more games with less risk of detection,” he said. 

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

So what can be done? Here, based on interviews with betting market analysts, prosecutors, and anti-money laundering specialists, World of Crime looks at a few steps that need to be addressed by lawmakers.

Increase financial declaration obligations for players. 

There should be a mandatory obligation for football players, coaches, managers, and referees facing a certain level of financial distress or unmanageable debt to report this situation to their football association. This is due to them being at heightened risk of bribery and corruption.

Such self-reporting practices are commonplace among police forces and other security agencies around the world. 

Such a policy could prove particularly valuable in the footballing world, where the public perception of players, even at a second-league level or below, may be that they are wealthy and unlikely to face financial troubles.

The definition of unmanageable debt would be defined, based on average earnings at every league level. However, such self-reporting would be mandatory as soon as an individual faces debt repayments which cannot be through normal income streams for a sustained period of time.  

Embrace machine learning for betting pattern analysis. 

The analysis of betting patterns has shown its usefulness in the case of FC Skenderbeu in Albania. However, illegal betting and match-fixing schemes have continued to evolve, with a shift toward lower leagues and first-half only betting, for example.

In order to keep up, it is critical to invest in advanced data analytics and machine learning tools capable of detecting suspicious activities in real-time. These technologies should be designed to identify anomalies in less scrutinized markets, enhancing the ability to detect manipulative behaviours. Regular training for analysts on the latest trends in betting patterns and match-fixing tactics will further strengthen the effectiveness of these measures.

Accelerate ratification and resource allocation within the Macolin Convention.

To bolster the fight against match-fixing, it is crucial to expedite the ratification of the Macolin Convention. Established in 2014 and in force since 2019, it has been signed by 37 parties but only ratified by seven countries (Norway, Portugal, Ukraine, Moldova, Switzerland, Italy and Greece). This Convention provides a comprehensive framework for international cooperation, but its limited adoption is severely hampering its effectiveness.

The ratification process should also be prioritized across all European nations to ensure uniform implementation. Additionally, resources should be allocated equitably to support countries in adopting and enforcing the Convention's measures. This includes providing necessary training, funding, and technical assistance, ensuring a robust and unified approach to combatting match-fixing and preserving sports integrity across Europe.

Establish independent Integrity Agencies.

The introduction of integrity agencies within UEFA, member states and associations should be welcomed. To effectively combat match-fixing and corruption in football, their independence should be guaranteed and strengthened to avoid influence from club owners and other interests. By focusing exclusively on integrity issues, these agencies can provide specialized oversight, conduct thorough investigations, and enforce stringent anti-corruption measures.

These independent bodies would be tasked with monitoring betting patterns, investigating allegations of match-fixing, and collaborating with international organizations like Interpol and UEFA. Equipped with the necessary resources and authority, they can take decisive action against corrupt practices. This approach will help maintain the integrity of football competitions and build public trust in the sport's governance.