Amid the fear of sports betting probes in NCAA colleges, it’s nice to know such fears have not disappeared in the U.K. Football Association (FA). The organization seeks to have gambling companies withdraw betting markets on yellow cards and other in-game incidents because of the possibility of spot-fixing.
To that end, FA officials have spoken to bookies and government officials about restrictions on some bets offered in certain contests, a move likely to elicit support from the Premier League, Mail Sport has learned.
Key among reasons to restrict yellow card bets are suspicious patterns received by West Ham’s Lucas Paqueta in three Premier League games this year. This marks the fourth high-profile probe into gambling on yellow cards in the last five years, and Mail Sport has been told there have been others that have not been made public.
Arsenal midfield player Granit Xhaka and Oxford defender Ciaran Brown were both investigated for suspicious bookings in Premier League and FA Cup games in the past 18 months without officially being taken, while in 2018 the FA handed Lincoln City’s Bradley Wood a six-year ban for deliberately getting booked twice in an attempt to win £10,000 on pre-arranged bets in two separate games during their run to the FA Cup quarterfinals.
Last season the FA banned former Reading defender Kynan Isac for almost 12 years from football for being deliberately booked in an FA Cup tie between Stratford Town and Shrewsbury as part of a betting scam, while there have been numerous corruption cases in Scotland.
The issue is whether yellow card markets are open to manipulation. Or whether or not officials in the department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport are willing to put in restrictions.
Discussions include restrictions on other niche bets such as the number of cards, corners and penalties given by referees during specified games.
The U.K. Gambling Commission must be involved in order to receive an intervention from the agency. The FA is also being asked to persuade individual companies from voluntarily withdrawing them.
Yet another approach is to suspend yellow card markets from lower league competitions and the early rounds of the FA Cup because they seem more vulnerable to manipulation.
Some of the larger companies already took the step to abolish yellow card markets over integrity concerns with Unibet and 32Red among them. Countries such as Sweden and Germany ban yellow cards altogether,
In an efforts to move themselves from the FA and Premier League, the leagues have taken some steps to remove themselves from the gaming industry.
