I challenge the reader of this text to find a single newspaper article or court case that involves match-fixing, in which the operator or bookmaker is the criminal. Do this exercise and you will be surprised. There is not.
The reason is very simple, even obvious, but discussions about betting and regulation always approach the subject of manipulation as if this odious practice was engendered by bookmakers, when in reality they are the main victims.
It is necessary to understand the mechanism of the bet to understand who is the criminal and who is the victim. These lines are to lighten things up a bit.
Sports betting works like this: in a given sports dispute, the house studies the statistics of confrontation between opponents, lineup of athletes, place of dispute and a range of variables that can interfere, within normality, in the result of the match. Once this is done, the house offers the bettor a number called odd. This number is the rate of return that the bettor will have when investing his money. The odds system most used in Brazil (there are others) is the decimal. Once the studies have been carried out by the bookmaker, it presents to the bettor, for example, the number 1.9 in the victory of team “A” in the dispute against team “B”, that is, for each real invested, the bettor will have a return of R$1.90 (R$1 invested plus R$0.90) if team “A” wins.
Result manipulation comes in precisely to distort these odds. The bettor offers a financial advantage for team “B” to facilitate the defeat and bets on the victory of team “A”. That's how it works.
Bookmakers offer thousands (without exaggeration) of betting lines every day, in the most varied sports. Manipulating the result would be a financially stupid task, because it would undermine the credibility of the house, it would throw to the ground all the investment made in the study to define the odds, in addition to having to involve an infinity of people that would bring an illogical risk to a business that it is quite profitable.
By the way, it must be said that the profit margins decrease a lot in the houses, because they are forced to invest veritable fortunes to prevent them from being harmed with the manipulation of results, hiring giant companies of the sector, which are specialized in monitoring all the bets made for identify distortions.
The cheating gambler, by contrast, has very little to lose if he is discovered. In a country known for its impunity, a crime of this nature, in addition to mild penalties, is difficult to investigate.
Combating manipulation does not mean putting an end to sports betting. The path is difficult, but this is not it. The first step is inspection and monitoring, which is already done by the main bookmakers and in some sports federations. At the same time, it is necessary to educate bettors, because they learn not to go down that path and to identify a suspicious game. Raising awareness, especially athletes, because they are the ones harassed by criminals. For public inspection and policing authorities, it is necessary to train them to act intelligently to prevent criminal acts. Last but not least, exemplary punishment of offenders.
The federal government is announcing that it will soon regulate the sports betting activity that already operates in Brazil, in a somewhat clandestine way in a spectrum of legality that the market used to describe as a gray area. For now, the only talk is about tribute and how the government will raise money from the activity. It takes more, much more.
Gambling in general was banned in Brazil for eminently moral reasons, almost eighty years ago. Times have changed, but if there is no effective action against this crime that surrounds sports betting, the old-fashioned speech will gain strength and we will return to a reality of prohibition, in vilification of individual freedoms and to the detriment of this activity that brings benefits to sport and to the country.
Luciano Andrade Pinheiro
Master in Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer from UNB; President of the OAB/DF Sports Law Commission; partner lawyer at Corrêa da Veiga Advogados.
Mauricio de Figueiredo Correa da Veiga
Master and PhD student in Legal Sciences at the Autonomous University of Lisbon (UAL); chairman of the IAB Sports Law Commission; professor of Master Diritto and Sport at the Sapienza University of Rome; founding member of the National Academy of Sports Law; lawyer registered with the Brazilian Bar Association and the Portuguese Bar Association; former legal director of Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama; author of 8 books; partner at Corrêa da Veiga Advogados.
