Far-flung bets

WHATEVER the outcome of the charges made last week against Bruce Grobbelaar, Hans Segers and John Fashanu, one by-product of the legal process is the light thrown upon the vast scale of betting in the Far East on sports events around the world.

In parts of Asia where betting is illegal there are syndicates and individuals prepared to wager up to pounds 500,000 on the result of a single football match. Last year's World Cup and the huge expansion of satellite television networks are the two key factors in the Far East betting boom. McLuhan's "Global Village" now has a betting tent attached.

Last Tuesday night on Carlton's Sport in Question, Jonathan Sparke, managing director of the spread-betting firm City Index, revealed that the majority of this illegal gambling "involves wealthy individuals betting among themselves" and his analysis was that "they can get much better odds forecasting the margin of a victory than in simply betting on the result itself".

Sparke did stress that "none of these bets find their way into Britain", but British bookmakers are happy to acknowledge the huge, legal, wagers which wing in from their clients in the Far East. Jeff Wells, technical director of William Hill's international division, says that "the single pounds 50,000 bet, plus 10 per cent tax, is the order of the day for our clients out there and we took quite a few of over pounds 100,000 during the last World Cup."

In the autumn a Thai client staked the biggest bet ever on an English league game, with pounds 80,000 on Nottingham Forest at odds of 8-15 to beat Wimbledon - he won pounds 42,678.

Wells has spent time out East and has little doubt that "there's a lot more money being gambled there than in the whole of Europe. There are hundreds of successful businessmen, mostly of Chinese extraction, for whom gambling is in the blood. Their big passion is football and they can get games from all around the world live on satellite."

Wells explains their decision to ignore the local illegal markets as being "all about a difference of opinion. Over there, the illegal bookies offer a variety of bets. But if we offer conventional fixed-odds and clients think they can show a larger profit betting that way, then they'll play big."

Apart from the stream of six-figure bets generated by the World Cup, Wells recently fielded four bets totalling pounds 150,000 from just four different clients in the Far East on a group match between Bolivia and Chile in the Copa America, which was broadcast live throughout Asia. "Our biggest client is a Hong Kong man with a chain of restaurants, though more typically they are businessmen with international companies. They all have deposit accounts, not credit."

Wells is keen to stress their integrity - "We have good contacts out there, and know all about their businesses" - in order to allay fears that dirty money might be finding its way into the bloodstream of British betting.

"We are a public company - it would be bad for us if we were the victims of money laundering. All the British firms have security procedures for making sure this doesn't happen. We're not worried - so far."

But as Kevin Taylor of City Index recalls, the threat may often be there. "Before the World Cup we had a call from an overseas punter wanting to bet on the number of goals Colombia would score. As we didn't have any idea, we refused the bet."

The price paid by Andres Escobar, the Colombian defender whose own goal against the United States led to his being shot dead by an alleged hitman from a betting syndicate, is an extreme indication of the size of the stakes in the global betting game.