Betting is legal in UK and a lot of money is put on soccer games. Despite that there is no match fixing in EPL
The English Premier League (EPL) ended last week. There was the sadness at the retirement of Alex Ferguson after 18 years as manager of Manchester United, having won 38 trophies of one or the other kind, and not much surprise that the managers of several other teams were being sacked. The owners who stake a lot of money do not like failure and will not tolerate it. Millions are at stake if you come in the top four.
What there was not and has not been in my memory of watching several years of soccer in England is any instance of match fixing. Betting is legal in the UK and a lot of money is bet on the outcome of soccer games. Players are forbidden from betting and only very rarely has any player indulged in this bad habit. The players in EPL are all highly paid. But you cannot buy your place in EPL by purchasing a franchise. In this respect, EPL is something like British politics; just money does not take you very far nor can you make much money from politics. The EPL, indeed all football in the UK, is transparent and clean despite being inundated with money.
The football played in EPL is serious and is comparable with the game anywhere else at the highest level. This is so despite the fact that in the latest Champions League final played last Saturday the two finalists were German teams and no EPL team made beyond quarter-finals.
By contrast, the cricket played in Indian Premier League (IPL) is baby cricket; a make-believe romp which puts premium on hasty playing and flashy brilliance. It is more akin to baseball in my view when compared to serious Test cricket. The point is not the game but the money sloshing around the system. The IPL is very much in the image of Indian politics. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has been dominated by politicians and regional boards have political representations on them. The cricket-politics nexus in India extends to the International Cricket Council (ICC) as Sharad Pawar showed being involved at the highest levels of cricket and Cabinet.
The IPL has now been caught in a spot fixing scandal. It cannot be a surprise. Spot fixing or match fixing is of the same species as the many scams and scandals we have seen in politics. The principle is the same. The IPL itself has already had its scandals in the franchise selling process. It is no wonder, therefore, that players have been found cheating in collusion with bookies. This has happened with the Pakistani players who were suspended by the ICC. The question is, why do people cheat?
Someone who is in a crucial location in any structure is capable of misusing his position to make a lot of money. He may be a babu or a minister or an IPL player. The important thing is to be able to bend the rules and get away with it. By bending rules you can allocate the gains of a contract to your client and he can, in turn, give you a cut of the gain. A Raja can do it for 2G and so can an IPL player.
The issue is not, as some UPA minister said, that India needs a new law to punish match fixing. Match or spot fixing is cheating and we have laws to punish that. We also, of course, have laws to punish corruption. It is not laws that India lacks but any willingness to implement the laws. Indeed, the entire legal system is deliberately used to delay and divert punishment for crimes. So, more laws are passed just to complicate matters and postpone punishment. After all, the entire agitation by Anna Hazare was about passing new laws or appointing a Lokpal. What was needed was to ask why existing laws are not enforced. So, what can be done?
To begin with, it would be a good idea to make betting legal. Indians love gambling and have done so since ancient times. The Mahabharata hinges on a gambling match. On auspicious occasions such as Diwali or Holi people gamble as a part of ritual celebration. So, why have this hypocrisy and ban betting? Driving something underground which people love only rewards the gangsters. Prohibition is one such piece of hypocrisy which only encourages bootlegging and crime. Banning gambling only makes it attractive to criminals.
Once betting is legal then a lot of acts are not criminal and do not have to be banned. Cheating is still deplorable and so is match fixing. But that is not very likely to happen if the money at stake is not large. Betting is legal in the UK and a lot of money is put on soccer games; some even online during a game. Despite the money bet there is no scandal of match fixing. There are also no politicians on the Football Association Board. Isn?t it time that cricket was freed of politics in India?
The author is a prominent economist and Labour peer