On 29 October, 2005, Sint Truiden played a home game against La Louviere in the Jupiler Pro League in front of a crowd reported as 7,000 in the Stayen stadium. It was a fairly uneventful match.
22 year old Aco Stojkov's third goal of the season gave the away team a 1-0 half-time lead, but he was replaced by teenager Alexander Potier before the break. And, in four, second half minutes, La Louviere went 3-0 up, with goals from Fadhil Brahami (his second goal of the season) and Potier (his second, ever), before the home team scored a late consolation through Désiré M'Bonabucya. Both Brahami and Potier received yellow cards from experienced Jupiler League referee Didier Petitjean. And there were four second half substitutions, two from either side.
The outcome left Sint Truiden in 13th place in the 18-team league, three places above La Louviere. The result was a surprise, as La Louviere had not had a great start to the season and many people assumed Sint Truiden would take the points.
There are many people on Charlton Life who know much, much more about betting than I do - people like
@bobmunro - so they might be in a better position than me to give an indication as to whether it's unusual for a low-profile match in the Jupiler League (which would usually attract up to £10,000 in bets) to attract wagers totalling £400,000. To me it seems unusual for a low-key match to attract bets of forty times the average.
If that £400,000 had been, say £150,000, you might assume that would be a bit less strange. But even £150,000 would be a much higher-than-usual amount. So, when £150,000 was placed the following week on a match between Cercle Brugge and Sint Truiden (a match which Sint Truiden lost 2-1, having again gone two goals behind) it could have looked like there were some people betting who had - how shall I put it? - a strong confidence that they knew beforehand what the result might be.
If you have read this far, thank you. I am going to change the subject completely now, by setting a couple of questions, which have nothing whatsoever to do with the above. So, to the mods on CL, I apologise, but I wanted to discuss two completely unrelated topics, but didn't want to clog up the main page with lots and lots of threads. The questions are (1) if a football match is fixed, is it usually the team that ends up winning the match that gets promises of payments beforehand (which I would call an incentive) or is it usually the team that ends up losing the match that gets promises of payments beforehand (which I would call bribes)? (2) would the EFL consider the owner of a club whose matches have been included in an international police investigation on match-fixing as someone "fit and proper".
Sorry to have put two completely different topics (the Sint Truiden matches and some questions about the EFL's fit and proper test) in the same thread. As you can see they are completely unconnected.
Comments
RD was president at the time. However he did his own investigations and made the players sign agreements not to bet against themselves. Seemingly he said all the right things to satisfy the Belgian police at the time. Oh and he was himself an investor in an online gambling site though not clear if that was concurrent with the suspicious match results.
The 1-3 game highlights
I know sky and others do the same but that's not under the FA or EFL.
It would usually be the team that loses - it's far easier to throw a match. Unless a convenient 0-0 suits both clubs as used to be the case at the end of the Serie A season.
I understand no charges were brought even though it stank to high heaven - so the EFL comment is irrelevant. Innocent until proven guilty and all that.
bet365 own Stoke City - you would never, of course, see us offering odds on Stoke's next manager, or a players move to or from Stoke.
Nope - it would be if we were the only ones offering odds on Stoke games or we were way out of line with the miriad of other bookmakers. But we have no way of knowing the outcome of a competitive league match involving Stoke than Joe Public.
Next manager or next player move would clearly be a conflict of interest as we would know much, much more than Joe Public. More than that - we would know the outcome already!
Last year we transacted over £50b in bets and made a bottom line of £700m - do you really think we would risk all of that (and it would all go instantly) if we were found to be rigging Stoke games??
1/5 - we obviously knew what the result would be ;-)
Any price you like - it's going to be the 44th minute.