One in five football matches ‘fixed’ in Goa, reveals report

International betting monitoring agencies have red-flagged 12 matches in the Goa Pro League for anomalous betting, including one game that was played on Tuesday. Since December when the first red flag was raised, agencies have been busy tracking suspicious betting patterns with 12 of the 68 games red-flagged and two others classified as Amber II.

Red-flagged games are those that have “something genuinely concerning about the betting”, while Amber II are those with enough evidence to suggest that the betting and/or match action was possibly abnormal from an integrity perspective. London-based Sportradar, who has a partnership with the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) in the field of integrity, specifically addressing match-fixing, has informed the All India Football Federation (AIFF) of three games played in December that threw up alarming results.

For all three games played between December 13 and December 29 last year, Sportradar said in its report, “there is clear and overwhelming evidence that the course or result of this match was unduly influenced with a view to gain corrupt betting profits.” These games include Dempo SC vs Calangute Association (4-0), YC Manora vs Dempo (0-4) and Velsao SCC vs Sporting Clube de Goa (0-5). For these games, evidence indicated that bettors held prior knowledge of Calangute, Manora and Velsao all losing the first half and eventually the game.

Significantly, Genius Sports, integrity partners of the Goa Football Association (GFA) who organise the league, also red-flagged the three games, besides another clash between FC Goa and Manora which the former won 2-0 on December 30, the last game before the league was paused due to rise in Covid-19 cases. As exclusively reported by TOI on