eGaming Review September Month end: unfair play

THE ISSUE OF bookmakers paying a betting right to sports federations cropped up again in August.

The Sports Rights Owners’ Coalition (SROC) led the charge against bookmakers going offshore by feeding a couple of stories to the UK press saying the moves by William Hill and Ladbrokes to relocate their online betting divisions to Gibraltar would increase the likelihood of match fixing and corrupt betting.

Although unrelated, the two issues have become entwined in a propaganda war wagered by SROC as it looks to get increased revenues from the egaming industry for its members, which include among others the English Premier League, UEFA and the International Automotive Federation (FIA).

SROC says offshore bookmakers have no binding agreement with sports leagues in the UK or continental Europe to pass on any information they might have relating to suspicious betting patterns.

This would prevent sports bodies from investigating fully any claims of match-fixing. SROC also wants increased rights revenues from the bookies for their use of data, fixtures and results.

Match-fixing and betting rights are separate and distinct issues, the problem is that they get rolled into one by most people.

The situation is replicated in France, where the upcoming egaming legislation plans to impose a betting right to be paid by operators “to ensure sporting integrity”; even though no one seems able to explain how the two are related.

The fact that sporting bodies want more revenue is no surprise and SROC is merely doing its job, but it also ignores the initiatives of bodies such as the European Sports Security Association or the fact that dodgy bookies are actually very rare.

SROC’s motives are commercial and political, but always portraying operators as part of a big fraudulent enterprise in order to get more money out of them is unfair.

This article first appeared in the September issue of eGaming Review.