Roger Blitz & Leisure Industries Correspondent The conviction of three former Pakistan cricketers and a cricket agent over spot-fixing has led to sports organisers calling for the right to be able to determine the type of bets that regulated gambling companies can take on events. Sports bodies such as the Premier League and the International Olympic Committee fear that the prevalence of betting on spot or individual moments in a match,such as the time of a throw-in during a game of football or the number of runs scored in an over of cricket,increases the risks of sportspeople being targeted by betting fraudsters to rig outcomes. Certain types of bets are just far too risky, said Nick Bitel,chief executive of the Sports Rights Owners Coalition,a lobby group representing a host of bodies such as the England and Wales Cricket Board,the Rugby Football Union,the IOC and German football's Bundesliga. Cricket officials acknowledge that their problems with betting corruption stem almost entirely from the illegal market in the Indian subcontinent which,according to Global Betting and Gaming Consultants,generates at least £3bn a year in gross gaming yield the sum lost by punters. In handing down jail sentences to the Pakistani quartet for their part in a conspiracy that involved the deliberate bowling of no-balls at last years Lords Test against England,Justice Cooke pointed out that betting on no-balls only occurred in unlawful markets,mostly abroad. But that has not stopped sports bodies demanding that governments curb the practice of the number of spot bets offered in legal,regulated markets. You start in the world you can deliver in, said Dan Johnson of the Premier League. The illegal market is the illegal market. It is very difficult to regulate. But you start by worrying how to regulate the legitimate market. Authorities are also worried about in-running or in-play betting,where punters can continue to bet during the course of sporting events. Broadband technology has transformed the online revenues of bookmakers,enabling them to offer a multitude of markets during sporting events. A survey by the analysts GamblingData showed the online gambling market leader,Bet365,offering markets in 229 events across 18 sports in a 10-day period. Ladbrokes said this year that it was delivering 28,000 in-play events in 2011,and William Hill said in-play betting had almost doubled in the first half of the year compared with the same period last year. Tim Lamb,of the Sport and Recreation Alliance,which represents UK sports bodies,said: I do find it strange that books can be opened by commercial companies on sporting events and incidents that happen during the course of a match without the sports governing body having any right to say whether or not that is a legitimate bet. Betting operators say there are double standards to these arguments,not least because of the revenues enjoyed by sports through sponsorship from the gambling industry. Several sports offer rights to live streams of their events,which are bought by betting operators precisely because the rights help to augment their websites. It is all about trying to maximise their revenues, says Khalid Ali of the European Sports Security Association,which represents online operators. The gambling industry believes there is more sports bodies can do to educate individuals and to monitor suspicious activity. The bodies themselves say they lack the resources. France has passed into law a sports betting right,requiring gambling operators to pay for the right to take bets. Italy restricts the number of permissible in-play events. But British ministers are minded not to impose such curbs,although a betting right is one of the options they are considering as part of talks they are brokering between the betting and racing industries over a replacement for the antiquated horseracing levy. There is much at stake for the regulated gambling industry. © 2011 The Financial Times Limited
