Liga Portugal, which operates the national football league, has played down suggestions from Federbet that a number of matches in the country have been fixed.
Federbet, which monitors suspicious betting activities across the professional sports world, today (Wednesday) publically announced that it has evidence of suspicious activities surrounding a number of games in the country.
However, Liga Portugal has hit back at the suggestions and stated that although it is committed to combating activities such as match fixing, it does not currently work in partnership with Federbet.
Liga Portugal noted that it was approached by Federbet over the possibility of working together, but the services were of “absolutely unaffordable amounts” to the body.
“The formula that it has been using is a means of absolutely deplorable pressure: instead of reporting it to the competent authorities, in a reserved manner, without public outcry, suspected criminal behaviour, it chooses to launch public suspicion, shamelessly, on our clubs and our sports competitions,” Liga Portugal said in a statement.
“It should also make it clear that the problem of illegal betting is a too sensitive a subject for the Portuguese league to ignore, hence we have been developing along with the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF), contacts with the Department of the Judicial Police investigating this type of crime, in order not only to prevent this type of crime, but also to establish expeditious channels of complaint.
“Still, FPF has received support in this area through a competing undertaking to Federbet which works with Uefa (European football’s governing body), but unlike Federbet, it does so in a reserved manner and without launching public suspicions that could cause irreparable damage to the image of clubs and the people who work in them.”
The league added that it had acted on previous allegations by Federbet by passing information on to the country’s attorney general.
One match listed in the report included an exhibition game between Spanish side Ponferradina and Portuguese outfit Freamunde, which took place in August last year.
As reported by iGaming Business, operators that were offering betting odds on the game were supplied with incorrect information about the game from digital media company Perform’s RunningBall unit.
RunningBall said that its observer mistakenly reported information from a game at the same venue that involved teams wearing similar colours.
The match that was reported on took place on a field rented out to a group of friends.
Jason Foley-Train, communications and policy adviser at sports betting integrity body ESSA, has backed Liga Portugal’s criticism of the report, highlighting that the match was not actually fixed and instead had been declared void by many operators due to the supply of incorrect information.
Foley-Train told iGaming Business: “Whilst Federbet states that it has ‘found fixed matches’, as with the previous report, it is difficult what to make of the matches listed as there is no real supporting evidence.”
source : www.igamingbusiness.com
