Ceylon Today Editorial

Gambling and sports go hand in glove

24 December 2016

We have been discussing corruption in sports for some time and there seems no stopping this menace that has enveloped the sporting world. Once there were sports that used to be clean and played for the sake of enjoyment: Now all that has changed. The most recent report came out of Asia where AFC champs Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors were caught in a match fixing scandal recently. They are likely to face a ban.

Professional sports began with the introduction of special sports clubs who stepped forward to conduct games between each other for the sake of audiences that were willing to pay money to watch their stars in action. There was a multitude of newspapers and journalists to carry these stories as sports news of the day and many fans were seen in pajamas opening doors early morning to catch a glimpse of these reports daily. It was sheer clean enjoyment and the family then sat around the breakfast table and discussed what had gone on the previous evening between their clubs on field.

This is how various games became favoured by the public and stimulated the interest of the owners of clubs to give a better faring to the public with the idea of drawing in more crowds to watch games. The players who were asked to get this done were professionals who were paid high salaries. These very professionals soon began to forget their fans who by then had become far too engrossed in the very clubs promoting the sport. They began to be more interested in the money aspect of their involvement, than the sport itself.

All this happened with the growth of these clubs and the monies raked in by the clubs, who by now were far richer with private companies bringing in sponsorships, to pay player salaries and to get advantage for their products, which also became a lucrative way to earn more money for the players who became their brand ambassadors. These happenings took place mainly in the USA and Europe where there were many conglomerates who jumped at the idea of using these men and women sports stars that were already idols of their fans.

Zero tolerance was what went towards corruption set by the various sports bodies that ran the sports. But, corruption raised its head in many different ways around sports. The entertainment industry also had gambling going on along with the leagues but not part of it. Most in the gambling industry promoted other sports since they too had a large fan base. Other sports drew a lot of interest with these fans who visited gambling businesses to play. But, there was nothing wrong going on. Match-fixing became a big time business run by outsiders of the gambling industry. They are the ones who set up illegal gambling run by their people who were either connected to sports and also who had a client base to run their business.

As stated earlier, it is these people who connected the Asian aspect of sports with match fixing or it may have been the other way about. But, the fact remains it is big money that is connected with the running of illegal gambling today in Asia that is bigger than what goes on in Europe and the USA. It has been a big struggle that is being faced by the Asian football authorities with match- fixing and there are many big scandals that spring up periodically.

South Korea and China have scores of gamblers who are on the lists of illegal gambling runners, this very club spoken of earlier had already been fined US$ 80,000 just six months ago. But, there is no stopping the ongoing match-fixing, since the illegal gambling operators make much more and pay those involved in setting up clubs or its players handsomely to be in their ring. Little can be done to stop these operations, as the demand for it is much greater here in Asia. Do not forget the world has become much smaller today, giving these illegal operators more power to carry on their businesses.