‘The danger lurks close to the surface’: How Kiwi footballers are being targeted by international match fixers

A man sits in front of a computer, his hand poised over the mouse.

His face is out of frame, but his smart business attire projects importance, gravitas. Next to the keyboard sits a notepad and pen, to add to the impression that this is a wheeler-dealer in action.

It looks like any normal office set-up - except for the cash.

To the man's right, bundles of €50 notes lie in a haphazard pile, next to a large leather bag slouched open.

A photo of the staged scene was sent to a New Zealand football player through Instagram.

"Are you interested in match-fixing? 100% safe," the message read. "This is from my London customer, more winning to come."

As far as match-fixing approaches go, this was at the lower end of the "spectrum of sophistication", according to Andrew Scott-Howman, general counsel for the New Zealand Professional Footballers Association (NZPFA).

It is the match-fixing equivalent of getting an email from a Nigerian prince seeking your help in getting their fortune out of the country.

Regardless, the message was illuminating for Scott-Howman: a real-life example of the brazen approaches organised crime groups - seeking to manipulate betting outcomes - make over social media.

Scott-Howman and his colleagues were shown the message by a young footballer after an integrity training seminar delivered to national league players a few years back.

There were more stories to come.

At another education session, they heard from a player who had been approached on the sidelines after one of his games by an Asian businessman, with an offer of a professional contract at a Malaysian club.

The offer, presented on a forged club letterhead, included an upfront payment for a business class flight to Malaysia for a trial.

"That was kind of disconcerting, simply because those things don't tend to happen in ordinary football life," Scott-Howman says.

"As soon as the player and his family started asking questions of this businessman, they just disappeared, which suggests that they probably were up to no good."

The closest call yet came with a player at an Auckland club, who was approached online by a man purporting to be a FIFA-accredited agent.

The man said he could get the young player a trial at a European club. All the footballer needed to do was come up with $5000 to cover his flights and the agent's costs.

"When we spoke to the player, he was trying to get that money together to pay this agent," Scott-Howman says.

The approach was immediately reported to the police, who tracked down the IP address of the supposed agent and contacted Interpol. Overseas law enforcement authorities later arrested a Serbian man, who had stolen the passport of the FIFA agent he was representing himself as. The man had been targeting players in a number of countries.

Scott-Howman says the saga provided a definite jolt for local football officials.

"When those things happen, it's a reminder that the danger lurks very close to the surface.

"It's only a little bit of luck and good preparation that combined to allow you to prevent those things from really endangering the sport."

While in the above two cases there were never any explicit requests for players to fix a match or manipulate an event during the game, it carries all the hallmarks of how organised crime groups operate, he says.

It starts with grooming behaviour - an offer of sponsorship, some free training gear, maybe a meal or a drink after a game with a well-connected official, or the offer of a trial with clubs or a college scholarship.

Then, once the player is on the hook, the favours start to be asked of them.

"They'll say, 'Hey, I'm helping you with your career, I just need you to do this one thing for me in your next game.' It starts off very subtly and then it gets more and more overt over time."

NZ Football declined several requests to be interviewed for this series. The organisation did not provide a reason for its refusal, stating only that NZ Football "feel [these] questions would be better answered" in written form.

In its statement, NZ Football confirmed it had already received two reports of concern related to potential match-fixing approaches or competition manipulation this season.

A high-stakes game

Earlier this year, Scott-Howman ran his now well-rehearsed presentation past a different crowd: a group of officials from the Sport Integrity Commission.

The commission, which was established in July last year, is responsible for investigating all threats to New Zealand sport, including doping, harassment and abuse, and competition manipulation: a catch-all term that covers behaviours like match-fixing, spot-fixing and insider betting.

Scott-Howman, who has become one of New Zealand's leading experts in the threat of competition manipulation, was invited to share his insights from nearly two decades working in football.

Early on in his presentation, the Wellington lawyer asked those in the room a question: how much money do you think was wagered on the men's national league last season?

The guesses did not come close to being in the ballpark.

"There were a lot of shocked faces around the room when I revealed the answer," Scott-Howman says.

Data provided by the NZPFA reveals that, last season alone, $212 million was wagered on the men's national league - a strictly amateur competition - through offshore sports betting websites.

The jaw-dropping figure does not include local A-League clubs the Wellington Phoenix or Auckland FC. Instead, think Western Springs, Birkenhead United, Napier City Rovers and Miramar Rangers.

The data shows each game attracted between $500,000 to $1.4 million in bets through 96 online bookmakers, almost all based in Asia.

By way of comparison, RNZ sought betting numbers from Entain New Zealand, which operates the TAB and its younger, sexier sidekick, Betcha.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the organisation said it was unable to provide specific wagering turnover data.

However, the spokesperson said about 5000 customers placed a bet on last year's national league and the three qualifying regional leagues, representing about 5 percent of football customers across both TAB and Betcha.

While Entain declined to put a dollar amount on the total wagering, one former TAB insider suggests the numbers would be "minimal".

"It will be next to nothing," the source says. "You can safely say in New Zealand, less than $1000 a game [for the national league]."

The staggering amounts of money being wagered on the national football league through overseas bookies raises red flags for Rebecca Rolls, the chief executive of the Sport Integrity Commission.

She warns that with the surge in betting activity comes increased risks of competition manipulation and betting-related corruption.

"It's frightening, really, when you think about it in the context of New Zealand sport," she says.

"There's a number of vulnerabilities that exist in New Zealand sport, and I think New Zealanders need to make sure they understand what those risks are."

It is not just the final result these agencies are taking bets on.

Some overseas sports betting providers, including main players Bet365 and BetPlay, offer more than 200 markets on the national league, with punters able to bet on anything from the first touch, to the number of penalty corners, throw-ins and yellow cards.

These are known as microbets, and it's where spot-fixing becomes dangerously easy, according to Canadian academic and journalist Declan Hill, who exposed the link between football and organised crime in his 2008 book The Fix and is regarded as an expert on corruption in international sports.

Hill describes spot-fixing - the practice of manipulating small, discrete events that have little to no bearing on the final outcome of a game, such as the timing of a yellow card in football, a wide in cricket or a missed free-throw in basketball - as "the easiest form of corruption ever invented".

Despite these markets being easy to manipulate, Hill says sports betting agencies are not in a hurry to restrict their offerings.

That is because, even allowing for corruption, the business model for bookies is still a highly profitable one, with global sports betting turnover estimated to be in the trillions of dollars.

"You and I are speaking about the wave of match-fixing that's going on around the world, but the other thing that's going on, that virtually nobody talks about, is the wave of addiction," Hill says.

"What the gambling companies are trying to do is fundamentally change the way people bet on a game. They're trying to get their punters addicted, deeply addicted.

"People of my generation, we're used to the idea of people betting on the outcome of a game or something really significant in a match happening. But what the book-making companies are trying to do is get people to place bets every two to three minutes - a long series of microbets - so the adrenalin rush in the punter never dies down. The rational brain never has a chance to take over."

Risky business

As Hill exposed nearly two decades ago, match-fixing and competition manipulation has been a threat to international sport for a long time. But the globalisation of the sports betting industry has accelerated the threat.

Many of the biggest competitions in the world, including the English Premier League, Germany's Bundesliga, and Spain's La Liga, have faced match-fixing claims.

More recently, events have touched closer to home.

Australia's A-League has been rocked by a string of betting corruption scandals over the last two seasons, including one involving Kiwi footballer Clayton Lewis.

The ex-All White will this week be sentenced in the Local Court of NSW for his role in a yellow card manipulation scheme at his former club, Macarthur FC.

At his sentencing hearing last week, his lawyer told the court Lewis had been reeled into the scheme after being "targeted and exploited" by the team's captain Ulises Davila, who allegedly served as the "point man" for a South American organised crime group.

Rebecca Rolls says the Sport Integrity Commission has been watching the A-League case closely, and Lewis' story serves as a cautionary tale for all of New Zealand sport.

"As unfortunate as it is, I hope it has woken up some of our sports administrators," she says.

"That is a league that might have previously been classed as low risk because of the part of the world it's in, but what we saw is that organised crime groups have a very big reach."

When the former dual cricket and football international took on the top job at the commission, she described the sector's understanding of competition manipulation as "immature".

A year on, Rolls' impression has not shifted.

"Our understanding of it is definitely immature, and I would say there's probably a bit of complacency rolled into that as well. Unless you see something every day, it's human nature to think it's not happening. I think we've got a long way to go in terms of both understanding the threats and protecting ourselves."

Research shows many of New Zealand's domestic leagues fit the profile of the type of competition organised crime groups tend to target for the purposes of fixing and betting corruption.

A 2020 Europol report notes that "in principle" lower-level competitions across different sports feature lower athlete wages, crowd attendance and interest from the wider public.

"Sporting competitions matching this profile are equally offered on the betting markets and usually the most targeted by [organised crime groups]. In addition, the players are easier to approach and the bribing costs are lower," the report reads.

Rolls says there are a "multitude of other risk factors" that make New Zealand sport vulnerable, including the availability of livestreaming and our time zone.

Sports betting, by its nature, requires live action. You can only place a bet on a game that is in progress, and therein lies New Zealand's first exposure to risk. For two hours every Saturday, New Zealand sport has a monopoly on would-be punters' attention, as the only country in the world that provides live sport to the Asian gambling market.

This is aided by the increase in sports streaming as many sports turning their back on the traditional broadcast model.

It is understood overseas wagering turnover for the national league has increased significantly since NZ Football signed a deal with FIFA+, a streaming platform launched by the sport's international governing body.

NZ Football was one of the early adopters of the model, partnering with FIFA in September 2023 in an effort to make its competitions more accessible to Kiwi fans. But it also means all men's and women's national league games, along with selected games in the regional stages of the competition, are available live to international audiences.

Rolls says outside of football, the sports here that have the most "exposure" are basketball, badminton, tennis and table tennis due to the popularity of those sports in Asia.

The commission received 13 complaints or notifications of competition manipulation in its first year of operation, but Rolls says she is unable to comment on what the agency's investigations had uncovered, or whether any matters had been referred to police.

Rolls also warns that incidents of potential competition manipulation are likely to be under-reported.

"Just because people can't see it or don't know about it, doesn't mean it's not happening in New Zealand - it absolutely is."

Bets education

To combat the threat of competition manipulation and betting corruption, the Sport Integrity Commission has information-sharing agreements with both local and international law enforcement agencies.

Rolls says the agency also works with gambling watchdog agencies to monitor risks.

Likewise, NZ Football says it has "robust reporting and monitoring systems".

"We work with TAB in Aotearoa New Zealand, as well as overseas agencies ... who will report any questionable patterns, as well as any incidents of players or staff involved in the competitions betting on it," NZ Football said in a statement.

The organisation stressed no instances of competition manipulation have been detected in the "lifetime" of the national league.

This is backed by Sportradar, a global sports technology company, which uses advanced analytical tools to detect corruption in the betting market.

"In monitoring for match manipulation, we have never detected any suspicious matches in domestic competitions in New Zealand," a spokesperson for the agency told RNZ.

In its 2024 Integrity Report, Sportradar flagged 1100 suspicious matches globally, with 721 in football alone. Only two matches in the Oceania region caught the attention of the monitoring agency.

But Declan Hill believes there are limitations to Sportradar's data.

He says sophisticated match-fixing operators know how to avoid detection by spreading bets across multiple different bookies, and betting in dollar amounts that do not raise red flags.

"The reports that come out every year are not worth the paper they're written on," Hill, now an associate professor at the University of New Haven in the USA, says.

"Sportradar has a huge conflict of interest because they make their profit by signing with sports leagues and then providing that data to the gambling companies. They play both sides. So the very people they're reporting on in these reports are their clients."

Both Rolls and Scott-Howman agree the way to protect all levels of New Zealand sport is through education.

NZ Football has implemented mandatory integrity training for all players, coaches, and match officials involved in the men's and women's national league.

In its statement, the organisation said the training module explains the risks posed to the game, as well as how approaches may be made and the reporting processes for any incidents of concern.

Since Covid, the integrity training has been shifted online and is now managed by NZ Football.

But there are concerns about the limitations of this approach.

Football Australia has recently reintroduced in-person training for A-League players in the wake of the spot-fixing scandals at Macarthur and Melbourne's Western United club.

The move came on the back of scathing criticism from the Professional Footballers Australia (PFA) boss Beau Busch, who called for a bigger proportion of the governing body's gambling revenue to be invested in integrity education for players.

"If sports are going to be the beneficiaries of betting money, they need to make sure that they have absolute confidence in the integrity measures that sit around the sport, and most importantly, have robust player education," Busch says.

"Our hope is now that we can move forward and we can work with Football Australia to deliver something far superior than what's currently in place, because clearly it's shown that if the objective is to ensure there are no instances of match manipulation, the current system is falling short."

NZ Football also collects revenue from overseas sports betting websites through "betting information use" agreements, which are required under the Racing Industry Act 2020, to allow the bookies to run regulated markets.

The national body declined to provide details of the financial terms of these agreements, citing commercial sensitivity, but noted the "partnerships help support the competition, monitoring and delivery of integrity training".

Scott-Howman would also like to see a return to in-person training, but says he understands the challenges around making that happen.

"There's no question that in-person presentation is more effective simply because first of all, people tend to pay more attention," he says.

But in person, the training also becomes an important form of two-way communication.

"You get information back from the people in the room that quite often raises an eyebrow.

"Quite often, we were able to identify players that had been approached, or at least who were exposed to that possibility, just by meeting in person."

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