Although certainly no tournament or country is exempt from this risk - there are cases in the UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Portugal, Brazil - increasingly suspicious activities, which are usually linked to betting, have been taking place in places of lesser football tradition, i.e., those whose leagues are less relevant (e.g.: countries whose clubs do not compete in international competitions or athletes have a lower technical level) or their tournaments have less public appeal (e.g., state championships whose clubs do not participate in Series A and B of the Brasileirão).
This is because, in these circumstances, match-fixers feel more comfortable and more confident to convince players, coaches, referees or managers to engage in said manipulation, firm in the idea that, because they receive less large salaries, are less professional and/or are less in the spotlight of the control bodies, these people tend to be more easily convinced of their illicit and/or illegal purposes.
In this sense, the World Cup ends up being a competition with relatively low risk of match-fixing, precisely because all eyes are on the tournament. Still, with tournament betting projections in the order of more than US$150 billion around the planet, all caution is more than welcome.
Hence, even because it is FIFA's girl with golden eyes, the entity takes appropriate precautions to prevent sports integrity from being shaken, adopting prevention approaches to the most varied forms of manipulation and/or illegal influence in matches and competitions, as well as acting repressively, through its decision-making bodies.
Preventively, the most common ways to avoid match-fixing involve from the establishment of integrity systems to educational programs for the players of this market, namely coaches, athletes, referees and managers, but also the fans themselves, as consumers of the product sports betting that are.
The focus, therefore, must be both on those who could, in theory, “let themselves be sold” by recruiters, that seek to manipulate results, even those who will eventually come across such a situation, so that they reject being part of this type of scheme and, at the same time, denounce it through the proper channels for that purpose, whether they are state or those maintained by sport administration entities..
As an example of these repressive decisions, one of the most emblematic cases, and which has a direct relationship with the World Cup, is that of former Ghanaian referee Joseph Lamptey, banned for life from football after a FIFA investigation pointed to his participation in numerous scandals, publicly documented, over six years. The episode that triggered the investigation and culminated in the ban occurred after a match of the Russian Cup qualifiers between South Africa and Senegal in 2016, in which operators and integrity monitors identified a non-standard volume of bets centered on over-goals by the teams, which turned out to be later correlated to “intentional wrong decisions” by the now former referee.
Anyway, one thing is certain: it's a cat-versus-mouse fight. On the one hand, someone (the result manipulator) trying to intervene in the match or competition and maximize their earnings, always keeping an eye on the equation 'return on investment and liquidity'; on the other, the bodies that administer sport (in addition to the State, of course), tracking the movements of the betting lines (follow the money), seeking to detect irregularities and avoid damage, direct or collateral, to their modalities (and also to public health, the economy and society as a whole).
For the sake of the truth, however, it does not stop there: in the middle of this we still have the market, pricing each type of bet, the most traditional - game score, match winner, tournament champion - the so-called "minor events" - the minute that a player will receive a red card, which team will charge the first corner, how many side throws will occur in the second half of the match etc. -, and trying to protect themselves and reduce the risks of external interference in the results of competitions.
In the end, therefore, the bookmakers end up being, too - whether you want to, or not - true allies of the sport itself for its safety and reliability. The joint action of these with the management entities is something increasingly essential to world sport, in the search for greater transparency and suspicion of their activities - and will not be different during the Qatar World Cup.
Felipe Augusto Loschi Crisafulli
PhD student in Civil Law and Master in Legal-Political Sciences. Professor of sports law courses and related areas. Co-organizer of the collective work Sports Economic Law. Lawyer at Ambiel Advogados.
