Chinese corruption story

I often wonder why it is that the story regarding corruption in Chinese football hasn't made more headlines. It's been rumbling on for months, and the latest detention (a word I surely haven't used since I was at prep school), this time of a Commercial manager , brings the number of people arrested to 20 (including the head of the Chinese FA). That's a lot of people, and suggests that the game is riddled.

I suspect that the reason that it isn't all over every news outlet is that betting is illegal in China, and most of the betting firms that any of us have ever heard of don't offer bets to the Chinese. So it's completely, painfully, and baldly obvious that no-one can point a finger at any legal betting operation, which clearly means it's no fun to point out that maybe there is corruption taking place.

You think I'm a cynic? Maybe... But whenever there is a sniff of scandal in sport in the rest of the world, supporters of monopolistic betting systems love to link it to betting because they can do so while pointing at the big brand names in the 'private' betting industry and use it as a very helpful stick with which to beat them. Thus, even when the scandal patently has nothing whatsoever to do with betting ( l'affaire Renault , for example, or Harlequins Bloodgate ), people with axes to grind suggest that there might be some betting issue at its root. (I'm not joking: one sports leader told me on the Parry panel that maybe the Grand Prix crash had been something to do with betting but no-one had realised.) Then, they throw their hands up in horror and argue that if only all betting were run by the State, the world would be a much safer place. Absurd as it sounds, this is the basis on which countries in Europe have managed successfully to argue that betting is somehow a different proposition to every other industry in the world and should not be subject to the rules of the Single European Market.

In Chinese football, even Blind Freddie, as the Australians put it, would be able to work out the absurdity of linking the corruption to anything that could be helpful to those who argue against the existence of a regulated, open betting market. Indeed, pointing out that the corruption still exists even though betting itself is illegal in the country seriously undermines the argument that "corruption in sport is caused by the increase in internet betting", which is the familiar media refrain.

What they should be saying, of course, is that corruption in sport is caused by, well, corrupt people. Which doesn't make nearly as good a story, and doesn't help push the agenda that "we have to deal with this integrity problem because of these awful betting companies, so they all ought to be levied and should be paying sport to clear up the problem that they create."

So I guess when I said, "I wonder why this story isn't all over the media", I lied. Sorry.