Football and Tennis Are the Most Corrupt Sports, Here’s Why

The sports in which organized crime is most present are football and tennis, but the reported data also indicate other professional sports that are the target of criminals: basketball, handball, beach volleyball, and ice hockey. The involvement of organized crime is mostly manifested in rigging the results of sports competitions and also, through that, in illegal betting and money laundering activities.

Corruption in sports isn’t a new phenomenon, but according to a Europol report published a year and a half ago – The involvement of organized crime groups in sports corruption – there’s an increase in the activities of criminal organizations related to sports in EU member states.

Corruption in sport is considered a serious crime at the global level and is often perceived as a phenomenon that threatens the integrity of professional sports, but neglects the criminal aspect and involvement of organized crime and its networking in sports and manipulation of sporting events worldwide.

How to Define Sports Corruption?

The Europol report notes that there’s no consensus in defining sports corruption in law enforcement communities. This phenomenon can cover a wide range of different corrupt practices – from bribery, rigging, doping, frauds on sports bookmakers, money laundering, influencing the organization and hosts of international sporting events, as well as procurement procedures. All these corrupt practices contain a common element that seriously disrupts and affects sports and all fall under organized crime.

It’s pointed out that corruption in sports bookmaking related to match-fixing has a transnational dimension, and the report states the reasons why: manipulation of sports events is orchestrated by members of organized criminal groups and operates from different countries; rigged sports competitions may be held in one or more states, regardless of where the organized criminal group has reached an agreement to falsify matches; people involved in match-fixing are often transferred from one club to another involving different countries; in match-fixing in sports betting, this activity can take place in the EU but mostly outside the EU, especially in Southeast Asia; the factors involved (organizations/funders, intermediaries, sports workers, judges, officials, etc.) are located and operating in different countries; cross-border financial transactions are performed in different ways.

Europol describes organized crime groups in sport as dynamic and points to the mobility of their members. These groups cooperate with individual criminals who are at lower levels of the organization and are led primarily by personal financial gain, or they are other organized criminal groups at the transnational level with more sophisticated criminal networks that draw moves from the shadows. It’s noted that frauds in sports betting often happen via the Internet.

Who Are the Main ‘Players’ in Corrupt Sports?

The report states that organized criminal groups operating in the EU are often in cooperation with international criminal groups from Asia, the Russian-speaking area, and Armenia. These groups have adequate financial resources at their disposal, and have widespread networks in the sports sectors that are their target.

Asian criminal unions are the driving force behind sports betting because approximately 65% of the world’s sports betting market is located in Asia, whether legal or illegal. It’s believed that the number of illegal sports bookmakers is 10 times bigger than the number of legal ones. Organized crime groups from the EU collaborate with Asian criminal unions and their collaboration is described as synergy. No clashes between these criminal groups have been reported.

Southeast Asian criminal groups, especially those coming from China, are trying to buy smaller football clubs with financial difficulties in order to use them for manipulations in sports. To this end, EU football clubs are controlled by individuals or companies that further influence betting activities or match-fixing. However, Europol states that the involvement of Chinese organized criminal groups in sports corruption is still insufficiently researched. The constant inflow of money through offshore companies keeps clubs alive while, at the same time, they are used to launder money.

Some Eurasian organized crime groups have increased their involvement in sports corruption. Some of them are involved in several types of criminal operations such as drug trafficking, real estate crime, extortion, murder, illegal production, and tobacco distribution. Organized criminal organizations from the Russian-speaking area have taken control of certain football clubs with the aim of laundering money and rigging sports results. Some of the groups cited in the report are mafia organizations such as “Vory v zakone” (Thieves in Law).

In general, match-fixing encouraged by illegal betting is considered a highly profitable criminal activity with relatively low risk. Organized crime groups and mafia organizations operating internationally have shown increased interest in ‘investing’ in these lucrative businesses, and intelligence agencies estimate that this trend will continue in the future.

Football and Tennis Are the Targets of Organized Crime

The first on the list of sports targeted by organized criminal groups is football due to its international popularity, financial dimension, and a large number of bets on football matches. Most of the investigations conducted by Europol related to sports corruption concern football. The amount of money collected on bets on football matches, the substantial sum of which was counted from betting on the best bookmakers for football, far exceeds all other sports bets and amounts to 895 billion euros a year.

According to some estimates, less than one percent of football matches during the year are suspected to have been rigged. According to UEFA, sports corruption is a continuous challenge for football, especially for teams from smaller leagues and smaller countries in general. A Europol report states that it is suspected that illegal activity has shifted to lower-ranked leagues that aren’t monitored and that ‘high-risk’ leagues are no longer offered for betting, or that illegal activities at these levels are difficult to detect. According to Europol, match-fixing criminal unions have set up networks within countries – similar to sleeper cells – where players or referees can be easily activated to set up a match or do whatever it takes. These networks remain stable and aren’t easily disrupted.

Individual tennis competitions with a limited number of key players are an even easier target for organized crime groups. So far, Europol reports state that almost 500 tennis matches were manipulated between 2014 and 2018. This number depends on the investigations carried out and it’s suspected that the actual volume of match-fixing in tennis could be much higher.

The tournaments of the International Tennis Federation (ITF) and the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) are the primary goals of organized criminal groups. They use the method of individual bets performed by their men – a large number of simultaneous bets with small amounts of money in several lower-ranking tennis matches where the prizes are between 5,000 or 10,000 US dollars. Such matches are usually not recorded and don’t have video broadcasts, and tennis players themselves are easier to corrupt.

Bets are performed in legal, licensed bookmakers in the EU, but with a large number of real bets and real identities of accomplices (although there are also cases of fake and stolen identities), which brings high income to a low-risk organized criminal group. Eurasian organized criminal groups are particularly active in these operational illegal ways of cheating.

Other known illegal methods, according to a Europol report, include specific parts in the game, such as betting on draws. Bets can also be placed on the odds of a tennis player winning a match when they trail by a lot. A few seconds before the official broadcast, the referees transmit information about the course of the match, which gives extra time for betting and gain on the winner. In some cases, umpires work in collusion with criminals.

The Impact of COVID-19 on Corruption in Sport

The Europol report also notes that organized crime groups are taking advantage of the new situation with the COVID-19 pandemic, being flexible and using the crisis to their advantage. Criminal activity has continued and the long-term impact of the pandemic is expected to be particularly significant in the area of ​​organized crime, including money laundering and corruption.

The global cessation of professional sports in 2020 has disrupted manipulation and betting by limiting the number of sports competitions that can be bet on. Although criminal groups, according to Europol, have adapted to the new situation, targeting mainly lower levels of sports, youth games, and friendly matches, it was clear that they will target games that carry a higher risk for them as soon as sports returned to regular basis.

In some European countries, there have been cases of football ‘ghost games’ during the pandemic crisis, where criminals who rigged results falsely advertised in bookmakers about matches that didn’t exist in order to make a profit from betting. Ghost games were advertised on social media, blogs, or fake websites offering non-existent match statistics and results.