29Jul

The Normalization of Corruption: Gianni Infantino and Donald Trump’s Destruction of the Beautiful Game

The Selling Off of FIFA to the Kushner Family and Donald Trump is the end of credibility in the World Cup and FIFA This is the end. The proposed plan to sell off a section of FIFA to a group of investors led by Donald Trump’s son-in-law is the end of the credibility of Gianni Infantino’s FIFA. How can we take such an organization seriously? Remember the Folarin Balogun red card scandal where Donald Trump phoned up Gianni to get the one game suspension...

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24Jul

The Odd Odds Movements: Three Games in the World Cup had massive shifts in gambling odds

While the world focused on 'Red card gate', Donald Trump, Gianni Infantino and the scandal around Folarin Balogun, there were three games at the FIFA World Cup tournament that had strange, massive odds movements. Funny, you should mention that…. The New York Times’ Jacob Whitehead has just come out with an excellent article about betting irregularities at the FIFA World Cup. It came out the very day that I was posting an article on the same subject. The team at the...

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08Jul

How to Referee a Fixed Match: FIFA and Gianni Infantino’s Credibility Nightmare

It's not the fixing that is the problem. It is the perception of the fixing where FIFA has an enormous problem. A reasonable person, not a conspiracy theorist, could look at half-a-dozen of the games in this World Cup tournament and have genuine doubts about the integrity of the sport. Gianni Infantino has a huge credibility problem with this year's World Cup tournament Say what you like about Sepp Blatter’s version of FIFA (and I said much), at least the corruption, mostly, stopped...

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25Jun

Happy Hunting Ground for the Match-Fixers

This next few days of games at the FIFA World Cup are where match-fixers find their success. The match-fixers are already buzzing around the tournament and teams. The arrangements and initial payments made. For those of you who didn’t get a chance to read it - I wrote a three-part series on match-fixers at the World Cup. The Daily Telegraph was kind enough to ask me to write a summation of the work. Since then we have discovered - thanks to...

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11Jun

The Seven Secrets of Why There Will be Match-Fixers at the World Cup: Part 3 – No one is stopping them

The match-fixers were at the last men's FIFA World Cup in America. They will be back. There are more teams. The gambling market is larger. And no one is stopping them. Match-fixers approached players on the Swedish team before the 3rd place match in the 1994 FIFA World Cup Finals It was - theoretically - the second most important game at the tournament: The 3rd place match on July 16,1994. The game was between Sweden and Bulgaria. It was a...

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02Jun

Words Don’t Stop Bullets: Why Cricket Canada Needs Police Action

Violent extortion, threats, houses sprayed with bullets and alleged match-fixing at the World Cup of Cricket linked to sports gambling. Words don’t stop bullets. Bits of paper don’t stop gangsters from killing people. What Canadian cricket is facing is not a “sports crime”. It is not doping or cheating but an alleged, systemic campaign of criminal extortion committed by violent thugs. In April of this year, the journalists at my former Canadian television program the fifth estate (akin to 60 Minutes or Panorama in...

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21May

The Seven Secrets of Why There Will be Match-Fixing at the World Cup – Part 2

Match-fixing has a long, ignoble history at the FIFA World Cup. The fixers are intelligent, well-resourced and well-connected. Some of the football officials are deeply corrupt. There have been fixers coming to almost every FIFA international tournament since at least 1991. They have approached hundreds of players, coaches, and referees. In 1995 at the World Youth Championship in Doha, Qatar. Two young Portuguese players had been invited up to a room to discuss an interesting proposition by two attractive young Malay...

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11May

The Seven Secrets of Why There Will be Match-Fixing at the World Cup – Part 1

Of course, there will be match fixing at the FIFA World Cup - Why wouldn’t there be? Sports gambling/betting, corruption, under-paid players, its all legal! Match-Fixing at the World Cup So what you want, we can deliver to you. After this match, I have a game in the Under-20 World Cup… So Under-20 World Cup first two games they will play, so after the third game, they will do for us because XXXX is our team (names...

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02May

Sportradar, the ‘Nice Mafia’ Problem, & Another Dark Secret at the Heart of the Gambling Industry

Sportradar is facing massive pushback after two controversial reports on their business practices It’s big. It’s huge. If the short sellers’ reports by Muddywaters and Callisto are true, this is the end of Sportradar. There is no possible way for the company to survive. Note, please, the - if these reports are true - part. However, the vultures are circling. America being America, class action lawyers have set up shop trawling for customers. Three different sets of government regulators are - purportedly -...

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24Apr

The Dark Secret at the Heart of the Sportradar Controversy and Indian Organized Crime

Sportradar, the darling of the sports integrity industry, has been been hit hard by two investigation reports on their alleged links to criminal bookmakers and a superb documentary on organized crime in international cricket. What a day this has been! The journalistic equivalent of you-wait-for-hours and then-5 buses-all-come-along-at-once. There are at least five major stories that have broken today. For now, here are some points on two of those stories - more later on the other scandals. The Dark Secret at...

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