150+ Referees Potentially Part of Gambling Ring in Turkey

With gambling heavily restricted in Turkey, running large-scale and complicated gambling rings would be difficult, not to mention having serious repercussions for the parties involved.

 Now, though, the integrity of sports in the country has been put into question as more than 150 referees have been embroiled in a far-reaching scandal that has to do with match fixing.

While signals about fraudulent activity in soccer are more than in all other sports, the overall number has been declining rapidly. What to make of the fact, then, that hundreds of officials have been colluding to rig the game?

The Turkish Football Federation is now looking into the suspected referees who oversaw important games in professional leagues. The people in question are said to have placed wagers on games they were involved with.

Purge the Sport of All of Its Filth

Apart from the 150+ who are known to have actively wagered, anything between 371 and 571 current referees have been found to hold at least one betting account (the real numbers may be much larger).

The exact number of people to have wagered on top-flight soccer games involves 152 referees and 15 assistants. In the most staggering cases, 10 referees placed bets on as many as 10,000 bets each, and one of them placed bets on 18,227 games.

İbrahim Hacıosmanoğlu, the president of the Turkish Football Federation, said that the sport needed “a change,” and that it should be “purged of all its filth.”

Hacıosmanoğlu has not said that he would step down from his post. Investigations are ongoing.