Want to fix a football match? It's easy because no authority cares about friendlies

Fixed friendly matches are a blight on football but all too common. Typically arranged by organised crime gangs, they are easy to do because nobody wants to investigate

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Want to fix a football game and get away with it? Try staging a friendly involving a club preferably from eastern Europe, playing against a side from another country, and in a neutral venue. The chances of getting caught are minimal, and of getting punished, virtually zero.

Fixed friendlies are a blight on football, not least because those involved are probably also operating in non-friendlies. The fixed friendly games are organised outside of the remit of leagues and national associations, often by commercial agents.

There is little or no regulation and January is the worst month, as many European leagues take a winter break, but clubs still play friendlies, either at home or in training camps overseas.

Open-source intelligence (OSINT) combined with monitoring of betting markets by independent analyst Ivo Romano identified 28 friendlies involving European clubs played last January alone that showed signs of suspicious betting. This compares with 17 suspicious friendlies in the first month of 2023.

Suspicious betting movements are not categoric evidence that a game has been manipulated but do suggest the games warrant further investigation; unfortunately, apart from the odd notable exception, such as in Slovakia, this rarely occurs.

Fixers know this and that is what making manipulating friendlies so attractive. The footage below was filmed in the Turkish resort of Belek on 18 January last year, in a game between between Rapid Vienna of Austria and a Czech side, Synot Slovacko.

Suspicious betting was identified and the video highlights the irregular decision to retake the first penalty, and the odd decision on the second spot-kick. One might conclude that if this game were fixed then it involved the officials.

The country with the most clubs involved in suspicious friendlies in 2024 was Czechia, where manipulation of friendlies, predominantly involving low level clubs, has been endemic for years.

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WHILE YOU'RE HERE: The true scale of historic match-fixing in England by Asian crime gangs

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The Ethics Committee of the Czech Football Association recently resigned, labelling Czech football as one of the worst in the world for match-fixing and citing a lack of meaningful action to combat the problem.

The research shows that clubs from a wider range of countries are now getting caught up in suspicious friendlies.

Across the whole of 2024, there were 58 suspicious games. This was down from 68 games under suspicion in the previous year, but that does not mean that the problem is getting better.

Friendlies are typically offered for betting when there are less competitive games being played, but Euro 2024 offered regular high-profile games across a large part of last summer. In the summer of 2024, 14 club friendlies attracted suspicion compared to 34 in 2023, when no major international tournaments were being staged.

Fixing: an Eastern issue

A club can be unwittingly involved in a corrupted game if the opposition or officials are at fault. In places staging large numbers of games as part of training camps, such as Turkey, this can be an issue as a shortage of officials can provide an opportunity for fixers, but if a club is appearing in more than one game in a 12-month period this should attract suspicion.

In 2024, 11 clubs were involved in two or more suspicious friendless. All these clubs are based in Eastern Europe, where the Gypsy Clan – a known criminal organisation that has fixed matches in multiple sports over the years – are particularly active.

Eleven of the same clubs involved in suspicious friendly matches in 2024 also played in games under suspicion in 2023. Some of these clubs also appeared in a database of suspicious friendlies played from 2016 to 2020 produced for a European Union Erasmus+ project researching the problem.

One friendlies tournament staged every January involving Eastern European clubs has produced multiple betting alerts over the past decade.

Consistent inaction because “It’s not our problem”

One of the main obstacles to reducing the number of suspicious friendlies is the issue of accountability. If clubs from two different countries go to a third country to play a friendly that arouses suspicion, who takes responsibility for investigating the game? The associations from the visiting teams typically say its ‘not in our country’, while the host federation will say the two clubs are from overseas so it’s not their brief either. And so nothing gets done.

FIFA say the problem is a regional one and must be addressed at confederational level unless games are played from different confederations. This clearly occurred in 2024 with a number of suspicious games played between European sides and clubs from Africa and Asia.

Training games

Friendly matches are staged under vastly different conditions to competitive games. Provision of officials in training camps can create an opportunity for criminal gangs to infiltrate. Another route is agents bringing triallists into clubs for a one-off game.

A false name may be used and the player the vanishes.

In other cases, club officials can be corrupted. In one suspicious game between Slovak side Dolny Kubin and Croatian side Rijeka in 2023, a team of triallists were fielded and lost 14-0.

Friendlies can also involve players who have been substituted being reintroduced to play, while coaches may agree to alter the playing period to shorter halves or three periods of 30 minutes.

As these games are often training exercises, this is a quite legitimate practice because the purpose of the match is team preparation and not to provide a product for the betting industry. These games are however routinely offered by betting companies.

Betting markets

Regulated betting companies should report any signs of suspicious betting, and some may stop taking bets. Most fixers know this and only the most amateur criminal gang would risk placing a bet on a game they are manipulating with a regulated operator.

Most offshore regulators, in contrast, have no such requirements as their licences are from regimes with lax requirements such as Curacao.

Most of these offshore operators are focused on Asia, where appetite for gambling on football is huge, but betting is largely prohibited. Any betting operator offering bets on games in a country where they do not have a licence is classified as illegal by the Council of Europe’s Macolin Convention.

Not only do these offshore betting firms not share indications of suspicious matches, some even lay bets with rival operators, letting suspicious matches play out to profit themselves. Bettors following these odds movements may unwittingly place bets on these games, which can produce alerts on regulated markets.

Asian problem

Friendly games are popular with many betting firms because they are often staged earlier in the European day than competitive matches, which makes these games attractive both for punters in Asia and betting operators looking to offer constantly offer product around the clock.

In 2024, 64% of suspicious friendlies kicked off in the period up to noon European time. This is an increase from 51% in 2023.

Data conflict

Betting firms will only offer in-play betting allowing bettors the opportunity to bet on elements within a game, which is far easier to manipulate, if live data is collected and available for sale from the games. This is collected in-person by scouts from data companies.

At the top level of football, leagues are now realising the value of data and tying data companies into exclusive deals that exclude their rivals.

In contrast, there are no exclusive agreements in place for friendly games, which offer an easy source of content for data companies to fulfil their deals with betting operator clients.

The Erasmus+ project found that at one data company, 14% of all European football games on offer were friendlies.

Data companies claim not to sell to unregulated betting operators, but Norwegian investigative site Josimar revealed in 2022 they are willing to sell to companies with no licence. This makes friendly matches a particular weak spot that fixers know how to exploit.

The Erasmus+ project produced a raft of recommendations aimed at reducing the number of suspicious European friendlies, or at least making corrupting these games harder for fixers, but no action has ever been taken, and the problem continues to blight European football.

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