Gambling has a millenary tradition
in China,
in where people
bet or at list is willing to place wagers on just about anything, including bug
fights and rat races. But this situation has also created a series of inconveniencies,
online sports betting in China almost annihilate China’s soccer league in 2006
when a cheating and game fixing scandal erupted, involving club officials,
players and referees and resulting in post-game riots and game boycotts.
Since the scandal, several players,
coaches and referees were sent to jail, and the gambling rings were dismantled.
Also, not long ago, six footballers from China's
Liaoning Guangyuan team were imprisoned or sanctioned in Singapore
for match fixing after they were paid over $20,000 by their manager to lose six
matches last year.
This exactly is what is worrying Olympic organizers in
charge of the Beijing Games. Even when spotsbetting is illegal in mainland China, there
are literally thousands of booths and bookies on street corners in every city,
but it is the online gambling what’s really concerning the authorities. The biggest
online gambling syndicate case ever in China, according to reports on the
official Xinhua news agency,
happened just a few weeks ago when a court in northeast China convicted 42
members of an online gambling organization to up to 15 years in prison for
receiving about $847 million dollars in bets in a little over a year.
Gambling is even more
visible in Macau, where gaming revenues in 2007 reached the $10 billion, exceeding
the Las Vegas casinos
revenue for the same period. In an attempt to reduce match-fixing among
athletes and sports officials, the International Olympic Committee announced that
it would set up a special unit at the Beijing Games to observe and investigate
any "abnormal" betting patterns that could put the Games legitimacy
in peril.
"We have signed an
agreement with the major, I would say the bona fide betting companies. We rely
on them to advise us if there is an abnormal pattern in betting ... it is their
interest to work with us, and our interest to work with them" IOC
president Jacques Rogge said.
Rogge also said the IOC
unit would also work directly with Interpol to keep an eye on
"suspicious" activity and inform the respective international
federations.
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