World Cup ‘biggest single gambling event of decade’

With estimates of as much as $500 billion Euros (about $678 billion U.S. dollars), gambling on the World Cup in Brazil has been tabbed as “the biggest single gambling event of the decade” by Global Betting & Gaming Consultants of the Isle of Man.
“And each World Cup gets bigger,” said Warwick Bartlett, Consultants’ CEO who noted the occasion that comes around every four years is a bonanza for illegal bookmakers.
“The propensity to gambling in Asia is stronger than anywhere else on the planet, yet there are few legalized gambling opportunities,” he explained to AP business writer Kelvin Chan.
A handful of Asian jurisdictions in places like China, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, South Korea, The Philippines, Japan and Taiwan, offer legal sports betting in government monopolies. But, it is banned outright in many other countries, including India, Indonesia and Thailand where thousands of illegal online bookmaking outfits currently operate.
In recent weeks, Chan pointed out, there have been a number of police forces cracking down on illegal gambling. Not only have arrests been made but police officials have confiscated millions of dollars from the illegal operations.
In Thailand, where a business group estimates Thais will spend $1.3 billion on illegal gambling during the World Cup, police have set up a gambling “suppression center” and arrested dozens of gamblers and bookmakers.
Yet, the arrests represent only a fraction of the amount of illegal gambling going on, officials say.
As for the chances of game fixing at the World Cup to benefit illegal bookmakers, they are very slim, indeed, says Patrick Jay, director of trading at the Hong Kong Jockey Club.
“Organized crime has moved into football (soccer) because they have seen that this is a much easier way to make money than the traditional ways of racketeering, prostitution, drugs, etc.,” said Jay, but the chances of that taking place in World Cup play are unlikely.
The reason, he said, is because game fixers target games with low media and fan interest involving poorly paid players.
“There’s no doubt the match fixers will look at those games. However, FIFA, EUFA and Interpol are all over this now.” Their investigators are in the dressing rooms, in the stadiums, in the hotels and they are even liaising with bookmakers, Jay added.