Michael Owen, a horserace owning professional gambling former footballer claims match fixing "not a huge issue".
That's put that to bed then.
Michael Owen used to act as a bookies runner to the England team laying off the bets to Goldchip - a private bookmaker set up by his business partner, Stephen Smith in 2004.
Wayne Rooney ran up debts of £700K and Goldchip managed to achieve a remarkable return on turnover around ten times the industry average (http://www.theguardian.com/football/2008/jan/18/sport.comment5).
Additionally cash bets were taken from the England team and these are not included in the figures of visible profit for Goldchip - a sort of licit illicit activity.
Michael Owen: "It’s strong words, match fixing. When someone says match fixing to me I automatically think of 22 players fixing the result... but [it] is not necessarily people
colluding at the highest levels to rig games."
Okay.
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