International sports law journal (2015) 15:1–2

Abstract

2015 is the year of anniversaries in sports law. It is a century exactly since, in April 1915, an English football league first division match between Manchester United and Liverpool was fixed in United’s favour for financial gain by a number of the players involved. 100 years later, an English league football is dealing with a series of criminal trials relating to arrests made by the UK’s National Crime Agency after an investigation prompted by newspaper allegations of match fixing. In addition, a current Manchester United player, Ander Herrera, may still be called as a witness to a Spanish court hearing later this year over allegations that a match in May 2011 between Levante and his former club Real Zaragoza was illegally interfered with to ensure the latter won to avoid relegation. Herrera forcefully denies any wrongdoing. Sports gambling and possible, related corruption have become much more sophisticated since the ‘‘fix’’ of 1915, which was motivated by the fact that the footballers in question were facing a league shut down given the escalation of World War I. A recent investigation by the BBC, for instance, focused on the use of ‘‘courtsiders’’, who send back live data to syndicates and betting companies while tennis matches are under way. Courtsiding is linked to ‘‘inplay’’ betting, the purpose being to send back information faster than TV or betting companies can get the data and thus manipulate the odds on betting exchanges. The analogy is to high-frequency trading on the stock exchange where facilitated by tailored computer programmes, a micro-second advantage can translate into profit. The BBC investigation into courtsiders claimed that 75 people were at last year’s Wimbledon final, sending information back or betting on their own. It further noted that the tennis authorities, principally through its Tennis Integrity Unit, have been trying to ‘‘weed out’’ courtsiders for years, although tennis umpires apparently provide official score data which are used by betting companies. The BBC investigation focused on a ‘‘courtsider’’ who was arrested at the Australian Open, and later released. It seems that, although courtsiding is not fixing as generally understood, it does illustrate that the key to understanding gambling odds is that prior inside information of any kind remains fundamental to financial gain on the betting markets. Changing to an anniversary of an altogether different kind, 30 years ago football faced tragedy with the Bradford City FC stadium fire which killed 56 on 11 May 1985. Recent coverage of the fire in the British media has focussed on the publication of a book suggesting that, far from being an accident as the immediate tribunal inquiry found, the fire was started by Bradford’s then chairman for insurance fraud purposes. The coverage prompted the chair of the original tribunal, a former judge, to dismiss the allegations as speculative and unhelpful. Not long after the Bradford fire, 39 spectators lost their lives at the European Cup final between Juventus and Liverpool held at the crumbling, 1920s-built Heysel stadium. According to one British journalist, ‘‘Heysel was the disgraceful culmination of more than a decade of ugly incidents involving English supporters on their European travels: Tottenham Hotspur in Rotterdam in 1974 and 1983, Leeds United in Paris in 1975, Manchester United in St Etienne in 1977, the national team in Basle in 1981 and so on until the spiral of moronic violence reached its tragic conclusion—logical in one sense, crazy in all others—in Brussels’’. Subsequently, English football was, & Jack Anderson jack.anderson@qub.ac.uk