Football betting scandals

Sports betting consist in making a wager on the outcome of a sporting event predicting its results. Betting is also an attractive way of supporting your favorite team or player and make money doing it. The large sums of money involved in the betting industry make it attractive not only for common people but also for the players or other people involved in the sport event.

One of the most appreciated sports for betting is football. But in his history the football had its betting scandals.

One of the first big betting scandals in football took place in United Kingdom in 1964. Player Jimmy Gauld tempted players to bet on the outcome of fixed matches for several years. In 1964 he sold his story to the Sunday People for GBP 7,000, also incriminating Sheffield Wednesday F.C players that betted against their own team: David Layne, Peter Swan and Tony Kay. All four received jail sentences along with six more players. On release all were banned from any participation in football for life.

In 1980 a huge scandal in Totonero shocked the world. The scandal was uncovered by the Guardia di Finanza after two Roman shopkeepers declared that some Italian football players sold matches for money. The teams involved in the scandal were Milan, Lazio, Perugia, Bologna, Avellino (Serie A), Taranto and Palermo (Serie B). As punishment the two top teams, Milan and Lazio were relocated to Serie B and the other five had been penalized -5 points. The players and the managers involved in the scandal were suspended from football for different periods of time according to their guilty, starting with 1 month and going up to 6 years. The Milan's president Felice Colombo was excluded for life.

Big scandals in football continue to appear and one of the most important and recent is the Bundesliga scandal in 2005. Numerous players from the second and third division, coaches and officials have been accused of involvement with an organized crime group. Robert Hoyzer, second division referee, confessed fixing and betting on matches in the 2nd Bundesliga division, the German Cup, and the third division Regionalliga. The scandal implicating also a group of Croatian-based gamblers was estimated at 2 million euro. Hoyzer cooperated with the investigators but after the scandal ended he was banned for life from any football activity and received a 29 month prison sentence. Like others referees or players that were banned or sentenced to prison for their involvement Dominik Marks, another referee, was also banned for life and sentenced to 18 month in prison. As a consequence of the scandal, Hamburger SV received 2 million euro as compensation for its early forced elimination from the German Cup.