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Speaker 1: Why do you care at all that matches are getting fixed?

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Speaker 1: Why does it matter? Because I love it. I love sport,

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Speaker 1: I love sport, I like the competition. What are the

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Speaker 1: consequences of not doing anything? It's it's the end of

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Speaker 1: the sport, because the second that fans believe that none

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Speaker 1: of it's legitimate, you lose everything else, everything. Andrea's Cronics

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Speaker 1: is a special kind of sleuth, and I went all

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Speaker 1: of the way to London to talk to him for

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Speaker 1: today's show. Andrea's investigates scammers who rigged some of the

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Speaker 1: sports matches you watch on TV. And here's something you

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Speaker 1: should know. Match fixing is everywhere. It's in soccer, it's

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Speaker 1: in basketball, it's even in tennis. So I hopped down

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Speaker 1: a plane to learn more about it. It's a beautiful

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Speaker 1: March morning, and I'm on a side street in London's

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Speaker 1: Financial district, not too far from St. Paul's and Bloomberg's headquarters.

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Speaker 1: And I'm at sport Radar, a Swiss company that specializes

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Speaker 1: in tracking corruption and sport and match fixing in sports

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Speaker 1: due to the growth of gambling. And I'm going to

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Speaker 1: go into today and meet with some of their senior executives,

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Speaker 1: and one of the things I'm I'm very curious to

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Speaker 1: learn today is the extent to which the gambling boom

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Speaker 1: is causing more games to be fixed, more athletes to

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Speaker 1: get bribed, more coaches and referees to get bribed in

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Speaker 1: order to corrupt the outcome of games. Welcome to Crash Course,

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Speaker 1: a podcast about business, political, and social disruption and what

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Speaker 1: we can learn from it. I'm Tim O'Brien. In the

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Speaker 1: last episode, I looked at how digital gambling has revolutionized

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Speaker 1: the sports world. This installment is the second of three

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Speaker 1: episodes about the past, present and future of the multibillion

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Speaker 1: dollar sports betting boom and its impact on games, fans

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Speaker 1: and society. And here's something I worry about. When there's

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Speaker 1: billions of dollars on the line, how likely is it

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Speaker 1: that your favorite sport is going to get corrupted? So,

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Speaker 1: for this Crash Course, sports gambling versus match fixing. Gamblers

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Speaker 1: and criminals have been trying to rig games since, like

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Speaker 1: the Olympics first began. It still goes on all the

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Speaker 1: time if you look for it. I decided to look

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Speaker 1: for it, which brought me to sport Radars London offices.

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Speaker 1: They have an amazing team there that scouts the entire

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Speaker 1: planet for potential fixes. I envisioned sport Radar looking like

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Speaker 1: a NASA control room, just one populated by street smart

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Speaker 1: gambling experts. I thought we'd have a soccer game up

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Speaker 1: on the big screen in London and then at some

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Speaker 1: point an analyst would leap up, point at something and say, look, there,

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Speaker 1: it's fixed. Andreas was quick to tell me that wasn't

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Speaker 1: exactly how they did things. If we detect a match

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Speaker 1: to be manipulated for betting purposes, we don't watch the match.

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Speaker 1: We watch the odds. Yeah, and the odds. They do

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Speaker 1: not lie. And to prove this he took me on

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Speaker 1: a tour where we are now, this is how do

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Speaker 1: you how do you call it? This is the control room,

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Speaker 1: the brain, Yeah, exactly. So this is fraud Detection Central.

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Speaker 1: This is a fro detexting system. And we also have

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Speaker 1: some investigators also working side by side with the analysts,

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Speaker 1: and the investigators are doing human intelligence gathering. It's to

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Speaker 1: find to identify ten grounds of scent in the desert

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Speaker 1: and contextualize. And this is done with hardware and software

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Speaker 1: and with guys which are extremely good to find all

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Speaker 1: publicly available digital information in the room I'm looking at

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Speaker 1: right now, this could be a computer gaming room if

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Speaker 1: it wasn't a sports analyst room. Right it's it's a

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Speaker 1: bunch of guys in T shirts who look like gamers.

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Speaker 1: Andreas and I are standing in a large conference room

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Speaker 1: stock with about three dozen computers and wall mounted flat

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Speaker 1: panels showing sports matches amidency of data jockeys. Andreas looks

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Speaker 1: like a wiry version of Woody Harrelson. He's really animated

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Speaker 1: and energetic, and he oversees a group of former intelligence operatives,

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Speaker 1: police detectives, journalists, and computer geeks that track five hundred

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Speaker 1: thousand sporting matches a year worldwide. They're looking for fraud,

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Speaker 1: and they start with the numbers by examining unusual and

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Speaker 1: often suspicious shifts in betting lines. I come from the

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Speaker 1: vote of sport, so I understand what such a scandal,

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Speaker 1: emte fixing, scandal or incident means to sport. It has

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Speaker 1: very severe consequences for the individuals involved, because if the

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Speaker 1: edigation is out, they destroy you because of the sensitivity

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Speaker 1: of their work. Sport Radar asked me not to name

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Speaker 1: the teams or countries in the pending investigations or games

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Speaker 1: we were looking at. Still, they showed me a lot,

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Speaker 1: including live games producing enough anomalies to make them suspicious.

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Speaker 1: A senior manager named Adam Francis was one of my

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Speaker 1: tour guides. He was young, looked like he belonged in

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Speaker 1: Silicon Valley. We sat down in front of his laptop.

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Speaker 1: Like Wall Street regulators following stock moves that smell of

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Speaker 1: insider trading. The sport Radar crew believes that wacky odds

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Speaker 1: in a game may prove there's a scam. Adam explained

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Speaker 1: how it works. Right now, we're looking at the screen

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Speaker 1: that our analysts will look at every day, and what

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Speaker 1: we can see here is a display of matches that

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Speaker 1: are being played today, either once that have finished already,

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Speaker 1: ones that are currently in play, or will be played

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Speaker 1: later today globally, globally across all sports, and specifically, what

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Speaker 1: this screen is showing is all the matches that the

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Speaker 1: fraud detection system has highlighted as already having a significant

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Speaker 1: betting movement. Significant betting movement before a game starts doesn't

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Speaker 1: necessarily mean there's something fishy going on here. Sport Radar

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Speaker 1: calculates its own benchmark before a match begins what it

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Speaker 1: calls expected odds or calculated odds, and then it monitors

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Speaker 1: how bookies odds worldwide shift against that standard that's based

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Speaker 1: on a wealth of historical data, and in any given

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Speaker 1: minute of the match can tell us exactly what the

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Speaker 1: odds should be. In a normal match. When bookies odds

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Speaker 1: very dramatically from sport radars expected odds, trouble might be

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Speaker 1: brewing or maybe not. For example, Adam says COVID nineteen

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Speaker 1: could leave star players benched at the last minute. That

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Speaker 1: of course would also change odds. Injuries and bad weather

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Speaker 1: can also play roles. Still, an alert is an alert

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Speaker 1: in the sport radar sleuths examine them. When they see

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Speaker 1: that there is a match that has an alert, even

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Speaker 1: from one bookmaker, they will look into these alerts. They'll

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Speaker 1: do it for every single match an alert is generated,

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Speaker 1: and they will try to find the reason why that

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Speaker 1: betting movement has occurred. But it's usually during a game,

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Speaker 1: not before, when evidence of match fixing surfaces. That means

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Speaker 1: a lot of gamblers will bet on something happening in

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Speaker 1: the game while the game is already going on. Live

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Speaker 1: bets have bigger payoffs As Adam watches the game, he'll

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Speaker 1: keep an eye on two lines, tracking two different sets

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Speaker 1: of numbers. One line shows the bookmaker's odds throughout the game,

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Speaker 1: what the bets are saying the outcome of the game

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Speaker 1: should be. The other line shows sport Radars expected odds

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Speaker 1: what sport Radar thanks the outcome should be. We're seeing

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Speaker 1: each minute of the match. We've got the score line

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Speaker 1: of the match in the graph you're showing me right

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Speaker 1: now for the first minute, well actually end up until halftime.

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Speaker 1: Right up until halftime, the bookmaker's odds and the actual

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Speaker 1: gambling odds are fairly consistent. Exactly that the tracking very

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Speaker 1: very closely, and this is what we see in the

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Speaker 1: vast majority of matches. And then, like an earthquake, something

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Speaker 1: happens exactly that we start to see a small deviation

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Speaker 1: on the calculated levels just after half time. By the

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Speaker 1: lasser stage of the match, the end of regulation time

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Speaker 1: by minute in this case, right, yeah, about many of

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Speaker 1: the minutes around that as well. The difference between those

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Speaker 1: book maker odds and the calculated odds are enormous. At

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Speaker 1: this point. The bookmaker's odds are at one point seven

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Speaker 1: to here in minute and the calculated dodds are at

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Speaker 1: four point nine zero. That's a huge difference. Adam thinks

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Speaker 1: the home team decided at halftime to toss the match

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Speaker 1: as part of a fix, since that's when the odds

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Speaker 1: started to change. But now sport Radar has to investigate

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Speaker 1: it and the clock is ticking. We can't rush these

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Speaker 1: things because the right decision is important. But at the

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Speaker 1: same time, we know that we need to work quickly

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Speaker 1: in these cases because it can't be a week or

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Speaker 1: two later that we're telling the federation about a suspicious match.

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Speaker 1: Adam told me he's bowled over by the amount of

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Speaker 1: match fixing he sees every day. Sport Radar has access

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Speaker 1: to a vast amount of information. It examined seven million

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Speaker 1: individual anonymized bets daily. They can scan odds posted by

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Speaker 1: six hundred different bookmakers. They've gotten very good at sniffing

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Speaker 1: out problems. Here's Andrea's We never had one case, which

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Speaker 1: is what you can call a false positive. In the

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Speaker 1: last seventeen years. We never had one false positive, No

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Speaker 1: false positives. In other words, they've never gotten it wrong

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Speaker 1: and they look at a lot of different stuff. I

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Speaker 1: think we in sports Rada we provide over sixty different sports.

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Speaker 1: Some of them were even cannot pronounce the name correctly. Combody.

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Speaker 1: Have you heard about Combody? You should? It's prominent here

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Speaker 1: already in the UK on the TV. Combody, I later

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Speaker 1: learned is a very intense version of tag. Millions of

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Speaker 1: people are watching it and betting on it. They're also

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Speaker 1: betting on soccer, football, basketball, cricket, you name it. They're

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Speaker 1: betting on snooker, ng pong, volleyball, and those are just

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Speaker 1: the games. You can also bet on a dizzy variety

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Speaker 1: of moments within games too, the coin toss, the number

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Speaker 1: of penalties or injuries, the color of gatorade dumped on

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Speaker 1: the coach when the game ends, and on and on.

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Speaker 1: Most games are clean, especially in leagues where athletes are

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Speaker 1: well paid. Athletes played a win. Refs make fair calls,

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Speaker 1: coaches act strategically, outcomes or anyone's guests. Gamblers can make

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Speaker 1: informed decisions, but nothing is a sure thing unless fixers

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Speaker 1: try to make it a sure thing by luring refs, athletes,

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Speaker 1: and anyone else in need of a little extra money.

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Speaker 1: Sport Radar identified nine and three suspicious matches across ten

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Speaker 1: sports in seventies six countries. Andrea says, that's just the

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Speaker 1: tip of the iceberg. The reading numbers are definitely high

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Speaker 1: because we have this super concious approach that we only

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Speaker 1: name or list a match to be manipulated for betting

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Speaker 1: purposes if we are hundred ten percent sure. So if

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Speaker 1: you add the borderline cases that we had, we can

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Speaker 1: easily double the number. Now, one question that raised from me,

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Speaker 1: I think you you track five hundred thousand games here,

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Speaker 1: that's less than one percent that are getting fixed. Um,

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Speaker 1: so if it's less than one percent, is it really

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Speaker 1: a problem. Yes, it's a problem because, um first of all,

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Speaker 1: corruption in itself it's something, it's like a cancer. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And of course we are not naive. Monipulation in sport

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Speaker 1: is as older sport and people always try to get

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Speaker 1: an advantage. But if you don't take severe action against it,

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Speaker 1: it will spread more on that spread after the break,

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Speaker 1: you can take this to the bank. Match fixes are

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Speaker 1: going to happen. None of this surprises Declan Hill, the

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Speaker 1: author of the fix and a professor at the University

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Speaker 1: of New Haven. Around the world is a graveyard of

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Speaker 1: professional sports that, I mean utterly destroyed by match fixing,

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Speaker 1: and it's been going on for a very long time

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Speaker 1: back in the day in Olympia in ancient Greece, back

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Speaker 1: in the seven b C, they started to put statues

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Speaker 1: outside the stadium, and these were really statues of shane

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Speaker 1: because those statues were built by money taken from athletes

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Speaker 1: that either cheated or fixed in the Olympics. You can

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Speaker 1: still see them, you know, when you go to the

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Speaker 1: ruins of the Olympia Stadium in modern day Greece, you

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Speaker 1: can still see where those statues were as you walk

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Speaker 1: into the stadium. Match fixing also spread to the Roman

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Speaker 1: Empires chariot racing in one of its great cities, Constantinople,

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Speaker 1: and the fans did not like it. They destroyed one

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Speaker 1: third the city of Constantinople, the biggest city in the

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Speaker 1: world at that time. So the most largest threat to

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Speaker 1: Constantinople in their thousand year history was when they were

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Speaker 1: fixing the chariot race. That's the anger that sports friends

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Speaker 1: will have. Although thousands of years have passed since then,

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Speaker 1: some things haven't changed. In Italy. Soccer is king and

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Speaker 1: yet when top professional teams were rated by police in

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Speaker 1: May on suspicions of match fixing, was anyone really surprised here.

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Speaker 1: Pol says it's uncovered a criminal syndicate that attempted to

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Speaker 1: fix more than three hundred and icy matches, including World

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Speaker 1: Cup qualifiers and Champions League games. BuzzFeed and the BBC

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Speaker 1: reporting today tennis officials have failed to deal with widespread corruption,

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Speaker 1: saying at least sixteen players, all ranked in the top

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Speaker 1: fifty have fixed matches losing for money tennis. Even tennis

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Speaker 1: is a commonly fixed sport, Wimbledon and other high profile

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Speaker 1: tournaments have been scarred by investigations of match fixing. Fixers

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Speaker 1: have even tried to get to the top of the sport.

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Speaker 1: Superstar Novak Djokovic that fixers unsuccessfully approached him in the past.

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Speaker 1: Somebody may call it an opportunity. I call it for me,

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Speaker 1: that's that's an act of on sportsmanship crime in sports. Honestly,

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Speaker 1: soccer remains the motherload of match fixing, though so many

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Speaker 1: matches have been fixed that I can't describe them all here,

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Speaker 1: But consider this. Albania's leading soccer team was banned from

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Speaker 1: competition for a decade after being accused of intentionally losing

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Speaker 1: games they were favored to win. The entire team. Officials

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Speaker 1: investigating the scandal received death threats. A few years later.

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Speaker 1: Corruption also surfaced in Columbia soccer championship has been postponed

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Speaker 1: over accusations of match fixing, with some players receiving death threats.

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Speaker 1: Reuter's reports and investigation is underway while the championship final

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Speaker 1: for Columbia's second division soccer league is delayed. It's not

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Speaker 1: always outsiders who are rigging games. It's the teams themselves.

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Speaker 1: Coaches sometimes intentionally fold, a practice known as tanking to

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Speaker 1: get a better chance at securing top draft picks the

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Speaker 1: following season. For example, Brian Flores, a former Miami Dolphins coach,

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Speaker 1: alleges in a lawsuit that the team's owners offered him

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Speaker 1: one hundred thousand dollars for each game he tanked. The

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Speaker 1: Dolphins have denied the charges, but tanking allegations are hardly new.

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Speaker 1: So many teams, many franchises, and American professional sport of

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Speaker 1: deliberately gone out to lose games so that they will

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Speaker 1: get top ranked athletes the next season. They call it

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Speaker 1: the process. And I'm telling you, as an athlete, that

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Speaker 1: is a huge in soul and that is a massive

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Speaker 1: open door to corruption. Corruption like match fixing now I

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Speaker 1: know people get into heated debates about whether tanking counts

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Speaker 1: as match fixing, but I think there's no question that

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Speaker 1: a gambler who knows a game will be tanked can

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Speaker 1: have a huge paid a regardless unmistakable forms of match fixing.

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Speaker 1: You know, where points are shaved, where an athlete intentionally

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Speaker 1: draws a fall. That kind of stuff is ubiquitous. Globalization

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Speaker 1: has hit match fixing, and so now you have this

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Speaker 1: multibillion dollar, trillion dollar sports gambling market flowing all over

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Speaker 1: the world, flowing into the sixty thousand sports events, single

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Speaker 1: sports event a day. And whereas five years ago, ten

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Speaker 1: years ago, it wasn't worth anyone's while to fix Ugandan soccer,

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Speaker 1: or Kazakhstan basketball, or Russian table tennis or American n

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Speaker 1: C Double A stuff, it is now the n C

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Speaker 1: Double A college sports. Really, if you needed to design

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Speaker 1: a league that would incentive by corruption, it would be

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Speaker 1: very difficult not to do better than the n C

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Speaker 1: Double A. I mean, they don't get paid, A few

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Speaker 1: of them get their image rights, some of them get scholarships.

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Speaker 1: With those scholarships are in most cases instantly voided if

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Speaker 1: they get injured. This is a recipe for disaster. Andreas

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Speaker 1: and his sport Radar investigators are familiar with these kinds

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Speaker 1: of disasters because they found it's not just unpaid athletes

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Speaker 1: who are vulnerable, but also underpaid athletes who are also

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Speaker 1: easy marks. And it's not just the athletes, coaches and

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Speaker 1: referees are targets too. That's actually part of sport Radar's

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Speaker 1: origin story. Before Andreas joined the company, he worked in

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Speaker 1: business development for one of the big German soccer leagues.

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Speaker 1: That all changed after a local, poorly paid soccer ref

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Speaker 1: was caught fixing games in two thousand and five. Out

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Speaker 1: of a sudden, the scandal popped up into media and

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Speaker 1: we say, we from German soccer, we were caught of

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Speaker 1: got We didn't understand betting at all. We didn't understand

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Speaker 1: match fixing. And it was one year prayer to the

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Speaker 1: World Cup in Germany, so time wise, you can imagine

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Speaker 1: worst case scenario. When the scandal broke, everyone turned to

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Speaker 1: Andreas to figure out what happened. He didn't know, so

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Speaker 1: we enlisted a mathematician, an entrepreneur named Carston curl. What

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Speaker 1: made Carston ideal His little company sold sports statistics and

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Speaker 1: betting lines globally. Some of his clients bookies had spotted

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Speaker 1: suspicious wagers before the scandal erupted and had stopped taking bets.

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Speaker 1: That's when Carston realized the same data he used to

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Speaker 1: track betting could also track match fixing. Andreas went to

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Speaker 1: work for Carston and built the investigative team they have now.

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Speaker 1: For his part, Carson had seen up close how fraud

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Speaker 1: had turned German soccer on its head, and he told

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Speaker 1: me he wanted to take on match fixing for the

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Speaker 1: same reason and Andreas did. This was pure panic. The

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Speaker 1: whole league was in panic. This is an ethical thing

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Speaker 1: on one side. On the other side, it's a business thing.

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Speaker 1: If we are in the business of sports betting, and

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Speaker 1: if people don't believe that this is a fair play

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Speaker 1: and fair match, sports betting will not exist and sports

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Speaker 1: will not exist. Carson's point, trust is everything. If fans

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Speaker 1: lose faith the competitions are honest, they'll lose faith in

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Speaker 1: entire sports preventing. That is what motivated Carston. His company

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Speaker 1: eventually became sport Radar, a data harvesting juggernaut that now

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Speaker 1: boasts such high profile investors as Michael Jordan's and Mark Cuban.

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Speaker 1: Other companies now offer a similar service, but sport Radar,

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Speaker 1: which has been in business longer, employees about three thousand

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Speaker 1: people and has partnered with major sports brands, is the

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Speaker 1: gold standard. Sport Radars timing in the early two thousands

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Speaker 1: was almost perfect tracking match fixing was just the company's

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Speaker 1: side business. Its core business, offering data to gamblers began

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Speaker 1: writing the sports betting boom sweeping across Europe and especially

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Speaker 1: the UK. At the same time, match fixing grew alongside

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Speaker 1: that boom. Sport Radar estimates conservatively that match fixers hauled

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Speaker 1: in profits of about a hundred and seventy seven million

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Speaker 1: dollars last year. Maybe bank robbers in America are in

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Speaker 1: the wrong business. They only grab a fraction of that

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Speaker 1: amount annually. Bank robbers match fixers. I've always found criminals interesting.

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Speaker 1: They so chaos and break rules. I found the people

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Speaker 1: who hunt them down fascinating too. In the best cases,

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Speaker 1: they're out to restore order and fairness. I wanted to

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Speaker 1: reach out to some of the good guys, but investigators

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Speaker 1: in the UK wouldn't speak with me. I'm back at home.

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Speaker 1: The FBI took my call. Sport Radar partners with them too.

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Speaker 1: When the Supreme Court deregulated sports gambling, the the Eye

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Speaker 1: was alarmed, so the bureau created a new unit dedicated

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Speaker 1: to unearthing corruption in sports. Aaron Omahan is an FBI

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Speaker 1: analyst who tracks match fixing. The image of what match

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Speaker 1: fixing is has sort of changed over time. The ability

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Speaker 1: to bet has become much more granular insofar as you

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Speaker 1: can bet if the next play in an NFL game

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Speaker 1: is going to be a pass or a run. One

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Speaker 1: might think, well, I'm not throwing the game. I'm only

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Speaker 1: throwing a play and that doesn't necessarily impact the final

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Speaker 1: outcome of the game. She and others at the FBI

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Speaker 1: I think it's inevitable that more match fixing will accompany

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Speaker 1: the sports betting boom. No one thinks match fixing will

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Speaker 1: ever be wiped out. The phrase that we use is

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Speaker 1: disrupt and dismantle. So you asked, are we going to

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Speaker 1: eradicate match fixing fully? What our goal is is to

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Speaker 1: disrupt and dismantle the illegal criminal activity, and in this

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Speaker 1: particular instance, match fixing. Aaron, like Andreas, believes that match

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Speaker 1: fixing left unchecked will poison fans relationship to sports. I

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Speaker 1: do think it hits close to home because sports are

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Speaker 1: sort of something that is on everyone's radar, and this

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Speaker 1: is something that people care about, and that does make

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Speaker 1: our job easier when you have something that people care about,

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Speaker 1: and so it's on people's radar more than it ever

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Speaker 1: was before. When we get back from the break, more

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Speaker 1: on how to catch a thief. M hm, So town,

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Speaker 1: where are you taking me? Right now? We'll get out

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Speaker 1: into the shop floor, say where our intelligence analysts of

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Speaker 1: researches and I investigators conducting investigations and they're collecting information,

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Speaker 1: analyzing that and turn it into intelligence. And this is

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Speaker 1: essentially the room where it happens. Yes, and you're gonna

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Speaker 1: take me. We're gonna sort of sit on the shoulder

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Speaker 1: of one of the analysts in real time exactly. Let's

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Speaker 1: go have a look. We're back in the control room

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Speaker 1: where the Sport Radar sleuths do some of their handiwork.

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Speaker 1: This time, I'm walking around with a man named Tom Harding.

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Speaker 1: He helps oversee intelligence gathering and investigations for sport Radar,

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Speaker 1: and he had some great stories about his own adventures

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Speaker 1: investigating match fixing. We'll get to those later, but first

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Speaker 1: Tom wanted me to meet another analyst, Jennifer Mellors. She's

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Speaker 1: an important link in sport Radars investigative team. Remember when

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Speaker 1: we met Adam earlier and learned about how he looks

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Speaker 1: at data to find fraud. Well, Jen goes out into

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Speaker 1: cyberspace to track down the actual people behind a scam.

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Speaker 1: She has a lot of questions answer who benefits from

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Speaker 1: an unusual bet placed during a game? Do the gamblers

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Speaker 1: who want to have something in common? Do they know

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Speaker 1: a player, coach or referee? Basically, how did they know

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Speaker 1: how to place that winning bet? When I sat with her,

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Speaker 1: Jen was tracking suspicious bets placed on a European soccer

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Speaker 1: player who managed to draw an unlikely penalty. She had

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Speaker 1: mapped the players personal relationships in a handy little chart

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Speaker 1: and a computer screen, So mapping out the people who

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Speaker 1: placed those bets and looking at the stakes that they

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Speaker 1: put towards that person receiving a yellow card, and then

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Speaker 1: the winnings they had as a result of that, and

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Speaker 1: you can see that there was concentration in that sort

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Speaker 1: of certain area in Latin America, which coincidantly, the player

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00:24:23,600 --> 00:24:26,399
Speaker 1: was also from the area. So again it highlights that

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Speaker 1: there may be a connection there that Carden's attention. She

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Speaker 1: started digging into each of the individual betters and looking

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Speaker 1: at their social media feeds. She was also having fun.

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Speaker 1: It's just finding information where you don't know where it's

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Speaker 1: going to be, so it's a bit of the hunt

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Speaker 1: to find what is that connection going to be, And

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Speaker 1: sometimes you're looking in one direction we think that something

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Speaker 1: might be found, and you can find it in a

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Speaker 1: completely random place, So it's just sort of the unknown

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Speaker 1: and the dig and the hunt. In this particular hunt,

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Speaker 1: Jen found pictures some of the gamblers had posted a

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Speaker 1: themselves with the players, trainer, and coach the cherry on top.

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Speaker 1: Some of the bettors didn't even try to hide their

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Speaker 1: scheme on social media. One of the best is posted

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Speaker 1: something on social media saying easiest money ever until next time.

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Speaker 1: So it's sort of alluding to that this is not

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Speaker 1: a one time thing. It could be potentially part of

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Speaker 1: a wider match fixing or spot fixing group of Syndica.

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Speaker 1: And clearly they're not worried about getting caught because they're

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Speaker 1: joking around in a crazy photo that I won't describe further.

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Speaker 1: I was going to say, why would they do this?

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Speaker 1: Because they think or know that no one's looking. On

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Speaker 1: the whole someone's looking. Tom has been around before coming

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Speaker 1: to sport Radar. He spent eleven years working in intelligence

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Speaker 1: for the British Navy and then worked for UK law

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00:25:48,920 --> 00:25:52,880
Speaker 1: enforcement and covert policing and surveillance. He spent a lot

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Speaker 1: of time investigating people who think no one's looking well.

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Speaker 1: Adam cruises through lots of data and Jen cruises to cyberspace.

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00:26:01,480 --> 00:26:03,919
Speaker 1: Tom gets out of the office and he goes to

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Speaker 1: the crime scene. So when you go to those matches,

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Speaker 1: are you looking to spot the match fixer? Personally? Yes,

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Speaker 1: and you're not worried about your own personal safety when

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Speaker 1: you set off to do this. Um, it's it's something

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Speaker 1: we considered and we risk assessed. We risk assessed. Tom

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Speaker 1: didn't seem scared of anything. He was clinical and by

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Speaker 1: the books, well sort of. When I pushed him for

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00:26:28,880 --> 00:26:31,520
Speaker 1: some war stories, he talked about a memorable trip a

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Speaker 1: couple of years back. I can't tell you where he went,

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Speaker 1: but he thought a game was about to be fixed,

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Speaker 1: so he hopped on a flight to another continent and

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Speaker 1: made his way to a soccer stadium. In this particular instance,

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Speaker 1: we've got a communication with the bat monitoring team. I'm

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Speaker 1: pretty early on into the match, we get an alert

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00:26:50,080 --> 00:26:53,760
Speaker 1: saying something that's going on. On high alert, this match

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00:26:53,840 --> 00:26:57,879
Speaker 1: is likely to be fixed. Tom was already on high alert.

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00:26:58,480 --> 00:27:01,480
Speaker 1: He was watching the field. Were any players interacting with

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00:27:01,560 --> 00:27:04,680
Speaker 1: fans or people on the sidelines, maybe they were signaling

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00:27:04,680 --> 00:27:08,240
Speaker 1: to someone else in the stadium and Tom watched the stands.

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00:27:08,760 --> 00:27:11,359
Speaker 1: Was anyone on multiple phones instead of watching the game.

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00:27:12,000 --> 00:27:15,639
Speaker 1: They might have been monitoring betting markets. Had anyone arrived

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00:27:15,640 --> 00:27:19,760
Speaker 1: at the game unusually late or left unusually early, they

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00:27:19,800 --> 00:27:22,800
Speaker 1: might be there solely to observe the fix. In this instance,

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00:27:23,560 --> 00:27:27,560
Speaker 1: the supicious alerts were saying that this match is fixed

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00:27:27,560 --> 00:27:30,000
Speaker 1: for a particular team to lose by three goals or more.

440
00:27:31,240 --> 00:27:34,800
Speaker 1: Twenty minutes into this match, it's still now and now,

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00:27:35,720 --> 00:27:39,520
Speaker 1: So sure after we see this group of free individuals,

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00:27:39,840 --> 00:27:45,719
Speaker 1: one stand up and interact with the goalkeeper and signal

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00:27:45,800 --> 00:27:50,439
Speaker 1: to the goalkeeper instead, so he interacts with the goalkeeper.

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00:27:51,840 --> 00:27:57,639
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's basically concede some goals soon please. Tom

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00:27:57,680 --> 00:28:00,399
Speaker 1: took lots of pictures of all of this. They'd come

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00:28:00,400 --> 00:28:05,000
Speaker 1: in handy later, and still fearless, he even approached the

447
00:28:05,040 --> 00:28:08,560
Speaker 1: suspected fixers after the game. It's just a friendly conversation,

448
00:28:08,680 --> 00:28:11,520
Speaker 1: just say, hey, guys, how's it going, because you just

449
00:28:11,600 --> 00:28:16,360
Speaker 1: need to hear. So I filmed that. We got sort

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00:28:16,400 --> 00:28:22,280
Speaker 1: of a good indication of write I phone right. I

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00:28:22,320 --> 00:28:25,240
Speaker 1: can't tell you what accent he had, but it's probably

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00:28:25,240 --> 00:28:28,760
Speaker 1: not what you'd expect. Someone back in Europe was watching

453
00:28:28,760 --> 00:28:31,960
Speaker 1: the same game's betting lines. They sent over a photo

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00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:34,080
Speaker 1: of someone they thought might be in on the fix.

455
00:28:34,920 --> 00:28:38,240
Speaker 1: It was the same guy Tom and photographed. They shared

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00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:41,560
Speaker 1: the information with several law enforcement agencies and then let

457
00:28:41,600 --> 00:28:45,200
Speaker 1: them take it from there. Mission accomplished. Then the sport

458
00:28:45,280 --> 00:28:48,640
Speaker 1: Radar folks went to their local pub to celebrate. I'll

459
00:28:48,680 --> 00:28:50,520
Speaker 1: confess to more than a little bit of envy for

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00:28:50,640 --> 00:28:53,480
Speaker 1: Tom and his adventures, but he's also dealing with a

461
00:28:53,520 --> 00:28:56,920
Speaker 1: tough crowd behind match fixing. Since there's so much money

462
00:28:56,920 --> 00:28:59,640
Speaker 1: to be made, organized crime back some of the biggest

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00:28:59,640 --> 00:29:04,440
Speaker 1: scamp particularly sport Radar says mobsters from Russia and Eastern Europe.

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00:29:05,280 --> 00:29:08,200
Speaker 1: Lots of fixes also get hatched in Asia. We're betting

465
00:29:08,200 --> 00:29:11,640
Speaker 1: limits are higher and oversight looser, so you might be

466
00:29:11,680 --> 00:29:14,400
Speaker 1: wondering why we spent all this time in London. It's

467
00:29:14,400 --> 00:29:17,440
Speaker 1: because everything has happened in the gambling market, there is

468
00:29:17,480 --> 00:29:20,240
Speaker 1: like a teaser for what's already begun to take shape

469
00:29:20,240 --> 00:29:23,400
Speaker 1: in the US. I asked Andreas about this when we

470
00:29:23,440 --> 00:29:25,880
Speaker 1: sat down together, to anticipate there will be more match

471
00:29:25,960 --> 00:29:29,520
Speaker 1: fixing in the US, because betting in the US was

472
00:29:29,560 --> 00:29:33,400
Speaker 1: always there, but it was underground, So the opportunities and

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00:29:33,440 --> 00:29:37,160
Speaker 1: the temptation for met fixing was always there. But nowadays,

474
00:29:37,480 --> 00:29:42,320
Speaker 1: with the opportunities for match fixes to reach out to

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00:29:42,600 --> 00:29:49,120
Speaker 1: vulnerable or open minded athletes and officials referees, this is increasing.

476
00:29:49,400 --> 00:29:52,080
Speaker 1: And this is part of the globalization and digitalization of

477
00:29:52,080 --> 00:29:55,760
Speaker 1: our wood. And it's so much easier because why because

478
00:29:55,800 --> 00:29:58,760
Speaker 1: we are living now in a digital environment where there

479
00:29:58,800 --> 00:30:02,760
Speaker 1: are no local imitations anymore. Because it's so easy and

480
00:30:02,800 --> 00:30:07,000
Speaker 1: the markets are so liquid. Betting is so huge on

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00:30:07,200 --> 00:30:10,920
Speaker 1: old sports and it's increasing. We can start an ethical

482
00:30:11,000 --> 00:30:13,640
Speaker 1: debate whether this is good or not, but prohibition in

483
00:30:13,680 --> 00:30:16,920
Speaker 1: disrespect will not work because if people want to bet,

484
00:30:16,960 --> 00:30:31,880
Speaker 1: they will bet. Here are crash course. We believe the

485
00:30:31,920 --> 00:30:37,760
Speaker 1: collisions can be messy, impressive, challenging, surprising and always instructive.

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00:30:38,520 --> 00:30:41,080
Speaker 1: In today's crash course, I learned that match fixing is

487
00:30:41,160 --> 00:30:44,360
Speaker 1: ubiquitous and the sports and gambling industry still don't do

488
00:30:44,480 --> 00:30:47,600
Speaker 1: enough to corral it. If they're serious about cleaning things up,

489
00:30:48,000 --> 00:30:50,440
Speaker 1: they'll need to be more transparent when scamps blow up,

490
00:30:50,960 --> 00:30:54,400
Speaker 1: and be much tougher about penalizing match fixers. Those are

491
00:30:54,480 --> 00:30:57,520
Speaker 1: lessons in the US will have to learn too. What

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00:30:57,600 --> 00:31:00,320
Speaker 1: did you learn? We'd love to hear from you. You

493
00:31:00,320 --> 00:31:03,840
Speaker 1: can tweet at the Bloomberg Opinion handle at Opinion or

494
00:31:03,880 --> 00:31:08,080
Speaker 1: at me at Tim O'Brien using the hashtag Bloomberg Crash Course.

495
00:31:08,760 --> 00:31:11,320
Speaker 1: You can also subscribe to our show wherever you're listening

496
00:31:11,400 --> 00:31:14,160
Speaker 1: right now and leave us a review. It helps more

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00:31:14,200 --> 00:31:17,680
Speaker 1: people find the show. This episode was produced by the

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00:31:17,680 --> 00:31:22,800
Speaker 1: indispensable Anamazarakis and me. Our supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson,

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00:31:23,240 --> 00:31:26,400
Speaker 1: and we had editing help from Katie Boyce, Jed Sandberg,

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00:31:26,720 --> 00:31:31,600
Speaker 1: Jeff Grocott, Mike Niezza, Samantha Story, and Christine Vanden by

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00:31:31,680 --> 00:31:35,520
Speaker 1: Lart Blake Maple says. Our sound engineering and our original

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00:31:35,560 --> 00:31:39,080
Speaker 1: theme song was composed by Luis Gara. I'm Tim O'Brien

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00:31:39,520 --> 00:31:42,200
Speaker 1: and this has been Crash Course. Check your feed for

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00:31:42,240 --> 00:31:45,720
Speaker 1: the next episode. In our gambling series about tribal casinos,