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November 19 - With qualifying matches for the 2010 World Cup soccer already underway, the global organization for this sport, FIFA, has said that it is closely monitoring every single game to check for any incidents of match fixing or illegal betting.
Using its innovative Early Warning System that was developed to pick up any suspicious betting patterns during the 2006 World Cup event in Germany, FIFA said that it began to monitor qualifying matches for the 2010 event as early as last year. The organization also stressed that it would continue to do so right until the final phase of the tournament in South Africa.
Speaking at a conference in Switzerland this week, entitled "Sports Betting - Mutual Dependence and Dangers", an analyst for the Early Warning System, Detlev Zenglein said illegal gambling and match fixing are twin dangers that threaten the entire soccer industry as a whole.
"It is a big threat... in the special case of football even bigger than doping because of the perception it leaves in the mind of the public," said Zenglein. "Every time there are rumors it sticks on people's heads and lessens their enthusiasm for sport because they think they might have been cheated."
While the President of FIFA, Sepp Blatter said that caution should be taken to avoid exaggerating the problem beyond its current proportions, Early Warning Officials say that illegal sportsbetting could in fact account for a third of the $350-billion revenue that is generated by the global soccer gambling industry.
While it is generally believed that the majority of illegal sportsbetting activity takes place in Asia, FIFA said that Europe was also a problem. "We have had more than 25 UEFA organized matches in the last two seasons that were very likely manipulated, but the investigations are still ongoing," said the CE of a well known European sports betting firm.
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