Football is a closed shop industry and outsiders like ourselves are only invited within these hallowed boundaries as we are able to significantly improve the performativity of aspects of the market sector. From our varied experiences in these consultative roles, it is our estimation that everybody of any stature within the sport of football is aware of the massive corruption in the game. Individual perspectives may be as a perpetrator, as a victim or as an observer but there is a widespread general acceptance that match outcomes are dependent on two key fundamentals - i) the global betting market patterns and ii) the institutional power bases. Both of these anti-democratic and anti-meritocratic templates eventually lead to the same location - the hugely liquid Far East underground betting markets.
Lets face it, we're dealing with a massive cover up here.
If one wishes to do so, one may place a £2.5 million bet on any English Premiership match with an Asian layer and the bet will be regarded as merely routine by one's counterparty. This issue of liquidity is key to the corruption of the sport. Taking this last weekend as an example, we can see that, in a rather low key pre-Champions League window, global liquidity on Premiership matches ranged from around £500 million to approximately £50 million. Major events are now realising up to £1 billion turnover.
Now, making the mendacious assumption that this money has NO impact on the integrity of the Premiership as a sporting brand, it would be reasonable to assume that the mainstream media might, just occasionally, mention that there is all this money sloshing around Asia. After all, if the money and the sport are clean, it would be of no consequence to print the "real" reality. However, none of our traders are able to recall ONE instance of any such exposure by the media. But, of course, neither the money nor the game are clean and the reasonings behind the media's claim that corruption always occurs in lower tiered nations is a paralogy. The media exists not to serve a readership but to impose a blinkered spectacular reality on behalf of the corrupt organs destroying the game. Think Murdochracy...
Dietrological prefer a dialectical approach to assessing our post-modern world but we also strive to expose the corruption as we would prefer to make our livings out of a battle of intellects and strategy rather than an assessment of corrupt mechanisms together with inside information.
To elucidate our point, we'll look at the weekend's Premiership matches. Dietrological had a near-perfect weekend on the English top flight matches. Indeed, we approached the Everton v Portsmouth match with our Platinum client having been advised correctly on all nine previous events (Gold/Silver was 6/6 and Bronze 3/3). Unfortunately, we were unable to achieve the perfect 10 as Pompey, despite being in a state of semi-uproar, are unopposable due to the outrageous amount of bias in their favour from the Professional Game Match Officials Board (PGMOB) referees and their assistants. We went neutral on the game. Still, nine out of nine active stances should create collective grins around the office but we are merely profiting, at some distance from the core, from an evaluation of the corruption underpinning the self-styled "world's best league".
It would not be in our interests to break these games down by type but every single solution that we provided to clients was based on one or more of the following inputs - inside information, institutional corruption, betting market corruption and the impact of solo rogue operators. Not one event was dependent on the fundamentals to any meaningful degree. All the media chatter about formations, injuries, form, motivation, rumours of change, revenge etc are simply irrelevant. As you only get one life, spending any of it reading such media circus nonsense is clearly something that will be regretted as deathbed time approaches. Just don't do it.
As we have mentioned previously, we would vastly prefer a properly regulated and meritocratic betting marketplace. We are able to profit from integrity or corruption but our love of the game demands that we constantly attempt to expose the rampant corruption which is so studiously ignored by all those talking heads, Murdochmen and public schoolboy journalists.
The fragmented cartel that defines the market structure has multi-layered complexities but certain core cartelised groups are markedly more psychopathic in their business practices than others. In order to rein these criminals in, there needs to be a massive shake-up of the football betting industry. The underground markets need to be recognised and regulated; the European bookmakers need to allow winning accounts and suitable liquidity; profiting from inside information should be made illegal; the game format needs to be altered to prevent referees exercising such inappropriate control on behalf of their paymasters etc etc. Obviously, developing more integrated betting platforms will not eradicate corruption by itself - the international financial markets have such platforms and yet insider trading, the cornering of markets, monopolies, cartels etc etc remain the norm. But an attempt at a regulatory framework would enforce that the corrupt influences would be acting outside the law and would create a more defensive posture from the criminality brigades. Think fox hunting in Britain. When we used to spend our Saturday mornings scrapping with hunt supporters and farm hands, while occasionally preventing a kill, we were always in the "illegal" position - trespass, obstruction, violence was always perceived with a rural bias by the PC Plod's of the shires. Fox hunting is now "banned" although it continues pretty much as before but the major difference is that the law is on the side of the fox now rather than on the side of the squires. This is seen as a first step towards a total wide-ranging ban and the development of regulated football betting markets should be seen in the same way.
Of course, it is not just the bookmakers and their accomplices who corrupt football. The institutions also willingly develop outcomes suitable to the marketing of their brand. FIFA could not allow Uzbekistan into the last World Cup. UEFA must ensure that the Champions League is top heavy with teams from the Big 3 territories and that Euro Finals correlate positively with the current political requirements. The Premier League are working alongside the bookmakers directly in a corrupt double whammy that is surely worth just the occasional column inch out there somewhere. The power ensuing from such degrees of control is absolute - consider Scudamore's self-assessed omnipotence regarding Game 39 or Sepp Blatter's hilarious: "At FIFA, we are like the United Nations, only more powerful". Psycho-idiot...
The power loci in global football are the sporting equivalent of the bonesmen in American society - such organisations and individuals utilise corruption "allowed" by satiric laws. If no effort is made to regulate these power lobbies then the great game of football will finally become the standard capitalist product - there will be the model, the series and, of course, a built in obsolescence. This process is energised by a Baudrillardian "misadventure of the person" and our only fallback position as we watch the demise of the game is the self-consoling one that we all know what we are in the long run.
Some compensation.
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
