FA official claims match fixing ‘not big issue’

London: Alex Horne, the Football Association general secretary, has claimed match-fixing is ‘not a big issue’ in the English game and insisted the governing body has not been complacent following the biggest such scandals in the UK for decades.

But Horne has also admitted football has a lot to learn from other sports when it comes to betting corruption and vowed to consider any measures that would improve the FA’s ability to detect the kind of alleged wrongdoing exposed in the past fortnight.

Two newspaper investigations have led to 13 arrests and removed any doubt that match-fixing is a clear and present danger to the integrity of the English game. The threat was considered serious enough for culture secretary Maria Miller to summon executives from the country’s major sports to Whitehall for a summit meeting on Tuesday, at which all parties agreed more could be done to tackle the scourge.

However, Horne said afterwards: “The consensus was that this is not a big issue. The intelligence we have says this isn’t wide-scale, but we don’t want to be complacent and don’t want to see this in our sport. We are doing everything we can — we are looking at all measures.”

Miller was unequivocal, saying: “Match-fixing is a real threat to the integrity of sport. If fans don’t trust what they see, the integrity of sport will be permanently damaged. British sport is a world-class product and we want it to stay that way.”

Chris Eaton, the former head of security at Fifa, said it was no coincidence that England’s match-fixing scandal was exposed by the media, not the authorities. “National blinkers in a global fight will not solve the problem of match-fixing,” he said.

“Act locally by all means, but I encourage all to think and plan globally about match-fixing. It is only by reacting to these global realities that this wave of competition corruption will be stopped.”

Tuesday’s meeting was also attended by sports minister Helen Grant, Horne’s Premier League counterpart Nic Coward, Football League chief executive Shaun Harvey and executives from the England and Wales Cricket Board, Rugby Football Union, Rugby Football League, Lawn Tennis Association, British Horseracing Authority and Gambling Commission.

Miller proposed that sports adopt a more coordinated approach in tackling match-fixing, with one idea being to form a new reporting hotline administered by the Gambling Commission’s Sports Betting Intelligence Unit. It was felt that independent reporting mechanisms might encourage more sportspeople to expose corruption in circumstances where they might otherwise fear reprisals.

Sports were also encouraged to evaluate their education programmes and share best practice, with Horne admitting the FA could learn in particular from the expertise that cricket had acquired in tackling its match-fixing scandals.

— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2013