AMNESTY? DON’T BET ON IT

The Paris 2024 ticket bands for the athletics at the Stade de France show a considerable proportion of the tickets are described as Category A. London 2012 had a much wider spread of ticket bands for fans.

tion. Cricket or tennis are obvious examples. A dot ball or a double fault. The prevalence of such “spot fixing” is unknown.

Are we only seeing the tip of the iceberg when it is revealed, usually by suspicious betting patterns rather than by direct observation of action on the field of play?

needed. He won’t be alone.

Walk On By

ing. I love winning. I am also addicted to that.”

Hands up, who hasn’t put a few quid on a horse or two in the Grand National for their kids?

Barton had his ban reduced by five months on appeal.

A couple of decades ago, I was CEO of a group that included a financial spread betting business.

A pair of clients, a married couple, featured in a Sunday newspaper article trumpeting the million pounds they had made on our trading platform.

Great publicity for the firm.

Not much more than a year later we were embroiled in litigation with them after they had lost all of that and much more.

No headlines this time, but a valuable human insight into the parallel

Outcomes in football, a fluid game involving 22 on-pitch players, are by contrast much harder to corrupt. Did Toney wilfully seek to influence the outcome of matches? Or is he simply as addicted to betting as Barton claimed to be? Has he foolishly fallen victim to football’s financial compact with the gambling industry? Place your bet.

Solutions? There is already a trend towards greater restrictions on football’s relationship with the gambling industry. This process needs to be accelerated and the controls screwed even tighter. Outright exclusions are unrealistic, and wouldn’t square with a generally libertarian attitude to betting across society.

And what of footballers themselves?

It would probably be beyond the reserves of courage and imagination at the FA, but an amnesty on all previous betting by players – provided they declared any history confidentially to the

The strangest headhunter call I had was a couple of years back. A leading search firm was looking for a chair for a new organisation being set up to tackle the harm caused by gambling addiction. Turned out its principal funding source was the betting industry itself. A different variety of sports washing. Not for me, thanks.

Let Them Eat Cake

A mate got lucky in the draw to buy Paris 2024 Olympics tickets, so I’m now long of a pair for a couple of nights of athletics – at eye-watering cost. Prices are very similar to those for London 2012 if you adjust for inflation. The big difference is that whereas London had a fair spread of tickets across all price bands for all sports, one look at the Paris venue maps shows the vast majority are in the highest brackets.

No wonder the locals are revolting. But the laws of supply and demand apply, so still expect all bar a few football group stage matches and a chunk of hospitality places to sell out.

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Ed Warner is chair of GB Wheelchair Rugby