Preventing a match-fixing muddle in Sweden  

Wherever there is competitive sport and a bookmaker willing to price up that action, there will, occasionally, be unscrupulous individuals who will look to manipulate the result or in-game outcomes for their own financial gain. The lower rungs of professional sport have always been particularly vulnerable to match- and spot-fixing, with tennis having been plagued to the highest degree by this scourge in recent years. In fact, just last week, Brazilian Joao Souza was banned for life for fixing tennis matches at APT Challenger and IFT Futures Tournaments held in the US, Mexico, Brazil and the Czech Republic. The 31-year-old isn’t the first tennis player to be caught rigging matches and he won’t be the last.

In a bid to prevent manipulation of sporting contests in Sweden, the Swedish Gambling Authority (SGA), or Spelinspektionen, recently drew up draft legislation that would ban certain derivative markets that can be influenced by an individual, such as a player or an official. The proposals include a prohibition on Swedish-licensed operators from laying bets on markets like red and yellow cards, whether penalties will be awarded and/or converted, disqualifications and double faults in tennis. The regulator, which highlighted 15 sports with “the greatest risk of manipulation”, including football and tennis, also wants the ban to include betting on the individual performance of minors. Licensed operators are already barred from accepting bets on events where the majority of participants are under 18.

Critics voice concerns 

Unsurprisingly, there has been fierce opposition among Swedish-licensed firms to the proposals. Indeed, Gustaf Hoffstedt, general secretary of the Swedish trade association for online gambling, BOS, insists this kind of prohibition would “create a headache” for licensed operators and law enforcement. “The most important reason is the average punter is looking for a wide sportsbook portfolio when he or she is in search of a gambling operator. It may be that betting on a yellow card isn’t their main type of bet, but we do know there is a demand for such bets. If those bets are only offered by unlicensed operators outside the Swedish market, then it will be only too tempting for the consumer.”

BOS – a mouthpiece for online heavyweights such as bet365, Flutter, GVC and Kindred Group – fears a customer drawn to unlicensed sites will place more than his or her desired bet on that tough-tackling midfielder in Sweden’s top division, Allsvenskan, to be carded. “When they are at those unlicensed operators, we believe they will actually place all their bets there and the bet types that are allowed [to be accepted by legal Swedish sites]. What the gambling authorities are doing if they follow these suggestions [is] handing over some more percentages of the Swedish gambling market to unlicensed operators.”

As for the law enforcement problem Hoffstedt previously referred to, it became illegal in Sweden to fix matches when the gambling market was re-regulated from 1 January 2019. However, the law states that it is a criminal offence to manipulate the outcomes of betting markets permitted by regulations. So, a ban on certain types of bets potentially throws a regulatory spanner in the works. “Today, betting on a yellow card is included in the licensing system and therefore it is illegal to fix such outcomes in a match. But if you exclude that betting type from the licensing system, then you actually decriminalise match fixing. It is so stupid,” says Hoffstedt.

Spotting a fix 

Perhaps the world’s most high-profile spot-fixing scandal involved certain players from Pakistan’s national cricket team who were convicted of accepting bribes from bookmaker Mazhar Majeed to deliberately bowl no-balls at specific points in a Test match against England in 2010. The infamous scandal left a stain on Pakistani cricket and shone a light on spot-fixing. Even football’s English Premier League hasn’t been immune, as former Southampton FC talisman Matt Le Tissier claimed in his autobiography published in 2009. In it, he recounted his failed attempt to wallop the ball straight out of play from the kick-off to win on a spread bet on how long it would take, in seconds, for the first throw-in to occur in Saints’ clash with Wimbledon in 1995.

The main difficulty with orchestrating spot-fixing is getting enough money down on these more obscure markets to make the scam worth the risk and effort. If fixers have to bribe players and/or officials, the betting returns obviously also need to cover these outlays. Indeed, Khalid Ali, CEO of the International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA), stressed in a statement following the release of the SGA’s proposals that these are “not the markets that corrupters primarily focus on as liquidity levels are too low and illicit activity more easily identified”.

While well-organised cricket and football match-fixers can conceal large bets in all the money sloshing around vast underground Asian betting networks, a four-figure, or even three-figure, bet on derivative markets like red and yellow cards with a Swedish-licensed bookmaker will tend to trigger alarm bells. “Any singles [bets] taken on card markets will have very low limits and suspicious betting patterns will be extremely easy to spot,” says Jeevan Jeyaratnam, COO of specialist odds-pricing service Abelson Odds.

“This is not a market that match-fixers would target, unless there is a highly robust black market offering extensive derivatives. Even then, it would be highly unlikely that Swedish Allsvenskan games would be in their crosshairs.” Yet, Katarina Abrahamsson, the SGA’s legal advisor and coordinator in the fight against match-fixing, insists the core aim of the proposals is to deter individuals rather than international criminal organisations from manipulating Swedish sport. “What we aim for is to limit or to prevent what you call the spontaneous match fixers, or the individual or solo fixers,” Abrahamsson tells EGR Compliance. “We are well aware we will not reach organised crime.”

The betting ban doesn’t go far enough

Despite BOS and its members with sportsbooks being against a ban, the Swedish Football Association, or Svenska Fotbollförbundet (SvFF), fully supports the SGA’s proposals. Integrity officer Johan Claesson deems “bans on negative events such as yellow cards and penalties” as a welcome move. He says: “These types of events are easy for an individual to manipulate and therefore [are] a great risk, not only for match-fixing initiated by organised crime, but also for match-fixing initiated by the football players themselves, or people connected to the players.”

He adds: “A lot of the fixing takes place because it is easy and accessible, and you can still earn enough money on yellow cards and lower-league football to make it worthwhile for someone who plays, for example, in the fifth tier in Sweden. These type of fixers wouldn´t turn to unlicensed operators.” Claesson backs up his opinion with this analogy: “It is just like someone who steals a bike because it is unlocked; they do it because they see an easy opportunity, but they wouldn´t steal the bike if it was locked.”

In fact, the SvFF believes the draft legislation doesn’t go far enough and that the SGA should have included a ban on markets that are “easy for an individual to manipulate”, such as number of corners. Furthermore, the SvFF wanted to see betting prohibited on lower-tier football, which certain stakeholders were calling for, yet this wasn’t included in the final proposals, and for licensed operators to be required to immediately report suspicions of manipulation. The SGA’s recommendations state that operators should compile a round-up of all suspected manipulations during the course of the previous 12 months by no later than the 31 March each year.

Falling foul of betting laws

The first 12 months of Sweden’s re-regulated market have proved to be a challenge for operators adapting to the new legislation in a country that was for years a prominent grey market. Last July, for instance, eight Swedish-licensed sportsbooks were hit with official warnings and penalties ranging from SEK700,000 (€66,000) and SEK10m (€942,000) for accepting bets on sporting events where the majority of participants were under 18. The following month, another four companies were fined for similar offences. If these latest proposals do become law, legal operators will be cognizant of the need to tread carefully if they don’t want to find themselves in hot water with the SGA.

On top of this, licensed operators are already losing a chunk of business to unlicensed sites targeting Swedish players. In fact, the SGA lowered its channelisation estimates in November from 91% to 85-87% based on data from H2 Gambling Capital. Both BOS and the IBIA believe a ban on certain betting markets will play right into the hands of the unlicensed sites, although it is difficult to gauge with any real accuracy how much it would impact the channelisation rate in percentage terms.

Either way, the hypothesis that those looking to place bets on outlawed derivative betting markets could turn to the unregulated sphere certainly hasn’t escaped the attention of the SGA. “We are quite aware of the fact that a large part of certain betting on sports are not always done in the Swedish system,” Abrahamsson acknowledges. “If we ban Swedish licence holders to have betting on this, we do realise we are not preventing companies outside of Sweden from providing these bets. But we want to do as much as we can for the part that is in Sweden and work as much as we can against the manipulation of sport.”

Gathering stakeholders’ opinions

As things stand, the proposals are out for consultation until 14 February, with the SGA pledging to take on board feedback from the industry. While BOS’ Hoffstedt admits the draft legislation could have been “much worse” for his members if the “devastating” ban on betting on lower-league football in Sweden had been included, he says the SGA is adhering to “huge pressure” from the Swedish government. Expressing his frustration with the system, he adds: “There’s so much emotion when it comes to legislation and regulation of the gambling market, and so little of rationality and logical assessments. So little of the legislation or regulation is actually fact-based.”

As an outsider looking in, UK-based Jeyaratnam suggests what Sweden is proposing is “regulatory overkill” when most operators secured licences prior to 2019 based on the regulatory framework at the time. “The after-timing nature of the reforms will put many off taking an interest in what is becoming a highly risky operating market. The effect this is likely to have is further licensee withdrawals and increased overrounds.” Ultimately, he believes a shift towards a “less competitive product” cannot be good for consumers and will “fuel black market operators”. Only time will tell if these predictions turn out to be true for what is still a nascent, but at the same time challenging, regulated Swedish gambling market.