During the games leading up to the finals of the UEFA European Football (soccer) Championship China has seen a spike in gambling activity online, something that is illegal in the People’s Republic, but which the authorities have made a strenuous effort to crack down on.
Despite the attempts to shut them down, online gambling remains a lucrative “profession” for thousands of organizers.
Much of the betting in Chinese yuan is occurring using the popular messaging app WeChat and paying off the debts via bank transfer using so called “red packets.”
Chinese police have made multiple raids on gambling rings. In one bust in the province of Guangdong authorities arrested 147 people and froze funds totaling about $15 million. Last week the Public Security Ministry announced that it had taken 235 people into custody over illegal online wagering and confiscated 28 million yuan (4,191,711 USD).
China’s Internet world is dominated by Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, which are all internet commerce companies that users can employ to transfer cash. Alibaba and Tencent say that they have systems that look for illegal behavior.
Alibaba operates Alipay. A spokesman told Reuters, “If we find suspicious accounts, then we are going to freeze the account directly. It only takes a few hours from the first to the last step.”
Tencent, which operates WeChat, takes steps to restrict groups that are suspected of gambling and has, for instance has limited the payment and “red packet” abilities on thousands of suspected accounts.
This activity has been multiplied because of heightened investment activity in soccer in China, where businesses are investing in soccer clubs, player agencies and media rights.
Hu Naijun, an assistant professor at the University of Science and Technology Beijing told Reuters, “With the European Cup everyone’s betting on soccer, but also over the last couple of years China’s soccer market has developed rapidly. Big investments and star names create a real lure.”
One anonymous organizer of a gambling ring described how he and several other organizers had a pot worth about $750,000 that had dozens of participants in each bet.
Another anonymous gambler told the South China Morning Post: “There are so many gamblers, groups and platforms during the European Championships though, that I think it’s really hard to find all of them.”
