Betting Companies Claim Match-Fixing Is on the Rise

With the rising number of fixed football matches across Europe, a top betting organization urges authorities to take action.

According to Federbet, an anti match-fixing organization based in Brussels, 110 games were fixed in 2013-2014 in Europe. After doing some research, company representatives said they were still suspicious about an additional 350 matches. These numbers show a 20% increase in the number of corruption cases, compared to last year.

Several players have been caught breaking UK gambling laws by betting on games they were involved in, but fixed matches also took place in Italy, France and Greece, as well as in Eastern European countries.

A problem nobody wants to solve

During a press conference held at the European Parliament, Federbet general secretary Francesco Baranca told reporters: “Every day all around the world there is an attempt at match-fixing. And this virus is getting bigger and bigger.”

As sports fans and mobile betting companies are looking forward to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, Baranca warned that international competitions may also be exposed to sports corruption: “It is not so impossible that when they have learned to fix the match during the domestic competition they are also going to fix the match in the international competition,” he said.

FIFA was praised for “trying to speak a lot about the problem”, but Baranca added: “We can solve this problem in quite an easy way but nobody wants to solve it. Federations are not listening to us, UEFA is not listening to us.”