The FA has suffered a legal defeat that will allow some club owners free rein to gamble on football, it has been revealed.
Investigations by The Times have established that a recent ruling has cleared the way for club owners to bet on football, and that large numbers of players continue to defy a ban on gambling on the sport.
The FA is reviewing its regulations partly in response to being forced to drop charges of betting against Maxim Demin, Bournemouth’s multimillionaire Russian owner. Demin’s lawyers won a ruling that because he is neither a chairman nor a director of the club he is not “a participant” subject to FA rules, as he is not involved in the day-to-day running of the club and so does not come under the governing body’s jurisdiction.
The Times has seen a copy of the FA’s secret rules for club owners who own betting companies. These rules, which the FA has refused to publish, allow special dispensation for firms to bet on football matches. Starlizard, a sports betting consultancy of which Brighton & Hove Albion owner Tony Bloom is a client, is thought to have bet millions of pounds on the outcome of games.
Players remain banned from betting on football anywhere in the world. However, Andy Reid, the former Tottenham Hotspur, Nottingham Forest and Ireland midfielder, believes that about one quarter of professionals in England continue to bet on football, often using accounts set up in their partner’s name. Joey Barton, the former Burnley midfielder, claims that half of all players may be betting.
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The FA took disciplinary action against 30 players for illegal betting last season, although two thirds were outside the top four divisions. The charity Sporting Chance said that it supported more than 500 footballers with addiction issues last year, 70 per cent of whom reported a gambling addiction as their main symptom — a significant increase on recent years.
The FA’s legal defeat comes after its website last April published and then removed details of charges against Demin, alleging that he placed 611 bets on football in breach of its rules.
The ruling means that other club owners who are not directors of their clubs could also avoid being subject to the FA’s betting regulations that ban all participants from betting directly or indirectly on football matches or issues, such as transfers or managerial appointments, anywhere in the world.
Several Premier League clubs have owners who are not on their boards, including West Bromwich Albion, owned by Lai Guochuan, the Chinese billionaire, and his compatriot Gao Jisheng, of Southampton. There is no suggestion that either owner is involved in betting.
Colin Bland, the chief executive of Sporting Chance, said: “Our experience suggests that gambling is the drug of choice for professional footballers.
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“Gambling addiction is a bigger issue for footballers than for the general population. We’re only aware of the people who seek us out for help so it’s impossible to know the full extent, but it does seem to be an endemic part of football culture.
“Footballers are often time-rich and cash-rich and have a degree of specialist knowledge, or at least the belief they have such knowledge, so are seen as very good customers by gambling companies. Some of the biggest problems occur when players retire, as their incomes drops, but their level of gambling often stays the same.”
Bland said that he recently met one player who had lost £600,000 in three months. Barton, who also played for Manchester City, was one of the players disciplined by the FA last year for betting on football. He is serving a 13-month ban for placing 1,260 bets over ten years. He told BBC Radio Four’s Today programme: “I would place bets for other footballers on my account.
“A conservative estimate, being in professional dressing rooms where there has been readily available cash for 15 years, you would have half the players out for a ban. If you banned everyone who bet, I would think 50 per cent of the playing staff would be taken out. It’s culturally ingrained.
“We have ended up with a totalitarian ban. Where we have got it wrong is we have gambling rules mixed up with match-fixing rules. There is nothing wrong with betting if it’s controlled. Betting is a huge part of the game — 12 of the 20 Premier League clubs have got betting sponsors on the shirts, the FA used to have their own betting partner until I pointed out the hypocrisy.”
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The FA is boosting its education programmes on gambling from next season, including promoting the use of its app, increasing club visits and stepping up publicity for its whistleblowing hotline. Under the FA’s confidential rules, club owners and directors who also have a financial interest in a betting company have to agree to an independent audit each year and sign an annual declaration that they have complied with the rules. These state they cannot use inside information or bet on the same competition that their club are in.
If the conditions are complied with, “relevant participants will be permitted to retain their financial interest and will not be liable to disciplinary action.
“The participant must not have direct involvement in the setting of odds, determining of markets or the selection or placing of individual bets on football by the betting company [or] pass on any information that they become party to as a result of their position in football but which is not publicly available at that time.”
Bournemouth declined to comment about the process involving Demin. The club are 75 per cent owned by a company called AFCB Enterprises Ltd, registered in the British Virgin Islands, the beneficiary of which is the Opalus Trust, described on the club’s website as “a discretionary trust for the immediate members of the Maxim Demin family”.
