A major new report into the threat posed by match-fixing has highlighted the danger of relatively low-paid football referees being targeted by gamblers offering bribes.

Concern that English football might be blighted by corruption was hightened last week when a former Premier League player reportedly admitted that he had accepted a £50,000 bribe from a bookmaker to help fix specific events in a match.

Low-paid referees a target for gamblers
Not up there: it's the lower leagues where refs are targeted

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger immediately warned that it was an issue with the potential to wound football terminally, and the publication of today's study, which was commissioned by the Central Council of Physical Recreation, paints a worrying picture of an increasingly fertile environment for corruption.

"In team sports, the relatively low pay of referees and their capacity to influence the result raised the possibility that even final match outcomes will be subject to manipulation," said the report, written by experts from the University of Salford.

The pay structure for referees in English football means that even some of the elite group of officials combine their work with another vocation. For example, Howard Webb, England's one official at Euro 2008, worked as a policeman until recently.

In England, there are only 19 professional referees in the FA's 'select group' and they are each paid an annual retainer of £33,000, although their average income after match fees is understood to be in the region of £60,000. By contrast, some Premier League players can command in excess of £100,000 a week. Below the 'select group', referees are paid expenses and a match fee.
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"We regard football matches in lower divisions as being a likely target for criminals," said the report. "In England and Scotland, as in Germany and Spain, betting volumes for matches below the Premier level are still high enough that large payments would be feasible to players and officials."

The report recommends high pay for officials and also raises concern at the possibility for corruption in tennis, especially because of the high betting volumes at tournaments below Grand Slam level.

Interest in sports gambling has never been higher. Betting on Premier League matches from for the Far East now amounts to $500 million (£250 million) per weekend, and it has been estimated that the amount wagered on an important cricket match can approach $1 billion.

In the UK, the yearly betting outlay on sports events is estimated at upwards of £40 billion, and a recent survey showed that a 10th of the male population now regularly bet on events other than horse and dog racing.

The surge of interest in sports betting has been helped by the internet and also new modes of betting. The vast choice of bets available to gamblers has raised concern because they often relate to specific sections of a match, aspects of the game under the control of a small subset of players or officials and also events that can be relatively marginal to the final outcome.

The report argues that betting firms, as a condition of licence, should be subject to independent audit of the internal procedures they employ. It also suggests the prohibition of players, coaches and officials from betting on their own sport. At present, footballers are banned from betting on matches or competitions in which they are involved.

The Government has recently introduced a two-year jail sentence to tackle betting cheats, and the report has led to the CCPR calling for a tightening of the obligation on the betting industry to share information of suspicious and unusual betting. The CCPR would also like the betting industry to make a contribution to the costs involved with introducing extra safeguards.

Four betting scandals
Cricket, the Cronje Scandal, 2000: Hansie Cronje was accused of accepting money from a bookmaker and, during the trial, he admitted that he took money to encourage his team to lose wickets on the final day of a match
Football, the Bundesliga scandal, 2005: In a Cup match in 2005, referee Robert Hoyzer awarded a team two dubious penalty and issued a red card against its opponents. Hoyzer confessed and received a 29-month prison sentence
Basketball, the NBA referee scandal, 2007: NBA referee Tim Donaghy admitted to influencing games during the 2005-6 and 2006-7 seasons
Tennis, the Davydenko case, 2007: Betfair voided all bets on a match involving Nikolay Davydenko in August 2007 after he retired during a match against a player some 83 places below him in the rankings.

Official earnings... How much do the men in the middle take home?
£6.76m
Premier League footballers: Weekly salaries are as high as £130,000.
£150,000
NBA match officials in US: Paid between $85,000 (£42,500) and $300,000 (£150,000) a year, depending on experience.
£60,000
Select group of English football referees: Paid only match fees and expenses on a sliding scale right down to amateur football.

By Jeremy Wilson
Last Updated: 2:11am BST 11/04/2008
Telegraph.co.uk