[Text/Observer Network columnist Frederick]
First, the "small ball scandal" of the "big ball moon"
No matter how many gamblers, in this month dominated by the World Cup, they often shout for "match-fixing", "black whistles", "on the rooftop", etc., but in the end, it is the snooker on the "small field" that breaks out the thunder of match-fixing in advance.
From the end of October 2022, to the large-scale lightning explosion on December 12, 2022, and then to the follow-up of the punishment of domestic violators by the Chinese Billiards Association one day later... So far, seven well-known snooker players, including but not limited to Liang Wenbo and Yan Bingtao, have been banned by the World Billiards Federation and the China Billiards Association for allegedly manipulating the game to play match-fixing.
The picture is taken from the official website of the China Billiards Association
And this snooker gambling thunder incident also stole a lot of the World Cup limelight for a while: why did snooker, which is recognized as a "gentleman's sport" by the outside world, have such a large-scale match-fixing incident? Why can't even world-class snooker players get rid of their "unclear" relationship with match-fixing? As the governing body, how can the World Billiards Federation, as the governing body, professionally combat the phenomenon of match-fixing that may occur in this sport that requires both wisdom and perseverance?
Second, the gentleman movement is not a gentleman - the historical snooker gambling incident
Snooker has always been known for its polite white shirts, suit vests, ties/bow attires and corresponding "gentlemanly style", but the sport has not been so "gentlemanly" in its history.
As early as the beginning of the last century, when the snooker movement was just emerging, Joe Davis, the "Sultan of Snooker" who won the first fifteen snooker world championships, was suspected by the public of having a close relationship with the betting syndicate.
As the world-famous "Mr. Snooker", Joe Davis is not only a golfer, but also has three other identities in his long career - he has long been the president of the World Snooker Professional Golfers' Association, was one of the co-owners of Leicester Square Hall, the main billiards venue in the United Kingdom in the early 20th century, and was the first to successfully negotiate a snooker television contract.
"Snooker Sultan" Joe Davis (Infographic/World Snooker)
It is precisely because of this four-in-one meritorious status of participation, management, hosting and commercial development that Joe Davis has a huge power to "operate" everything, and it was rumored that Joe Davis directly ordered to cheat in the draw of the match, so that strong players and weak players must "match in pairs" to ensure the box office revenue of the event. In addition, Joe Davis is also believed to have arranged for the stronger players to deliberately lose part or the whole game in some important matches (depending on the way the partner bettor opened or placed the bet) and divided the corresponding bet. However, there is no way to verify these falsifications in ancient times.
In a much larger professional sport like football, while there are scandals, the simple and crude way of profit-fixing and receiving benefits from gambling interests (the betting interests described here may be casinos, but more often than not, just small groups of gamblers) have not been seen for at least in top-level football for too long – for nearly four decades since the two Serie A gambling scandals of the eighties, "athletes/ "Match-fixing scandals involving sports teams receiving benefits from betting syndicates" generally occur only in secondary/lower-level events and are almost extinct in high-level events.
This is not to say that football people have higher moral qualities than snooker, but through more "high-end" counterfeiting methods - by manipulating the game to achieve better results, higher rankings, so as to obtain more exposure, more prize money, more sponsor support, obviously a more cost-effective deal.
After all, the total market capitalization of Las Vegas Sands International, the world's largest gaming group, is "only" 37 billion (December 17, 2022 data) or so, let alone those large and small gambler groups, who will offend Nike, Coca-Cola, and Apple whose market capitalization is several times or even dozens of times its market capitalization for them?
But in snooker, the example of "match-fixing at the advantage of betting interests" is all too common, and even the top golfers will actively engage in such activities.
As one of the world's last international sports organizations, the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association ("World Taiwan Federation"), which was not established until 1968, has had a large number of snooker players investigated and even banned for allegedly receiving benefits to play match-fixing for betting syndicates, including many world-class athletes - Quentin Hahn, Stephen Lee, Leo Fernandez, and most famously, Scottish "wizard" John Higgins.
"Wizard" trial (Photo/The Guardian)
When it comes to the name of "The Wizard" Higgins, even the general public who are not familiar with snooker may know a thing or two. However, the holder of the four-time world champion and 31 snooker world championship titles was "fishing and enforcing the law" by the famous British gossip newspaper "News of the World" in 2010 -
In this "fishing enforcement", Higgins and his agent, former Taiwan Federation director Pat Mooney, agreed to lose the game in a number of different matches in exchange for a total of 300,000 euros, and the two further discussed with the "fishing" how to cover up the scam, which matches and opponents to choose, and how Higgins would get the money.
After the incident, Mooney had to resign from his position in the World Taiwan Federation, while Higgins was suspended for six months and fined £75,000.
Video of Higgins being "fished"
However, you know, Higgins was the authoritative snooker operator "World Snooker Limited" (of which the World Federation is the majority shareholder) to certify the "Best of the Century" in snooker between 1968 and 2020[1] (surpassing "Rocket" O'Sullivan, "Golden" Steve Davis and "Billiards Emperor" Hendry) – you can imagine athletes with similar status in other sports, including but not limited to Messi, Will Federer or Usain Bolt deliberately lose multiple games for 300,000 euros?
Third, "the gentleman's family has no surplus food" - why are snooker "gamblings" so much?
In so many sports, why is snooker the only one with world-class or even "epic" athlete intent or direct involvement in match-fixing?
There is probably only one reason for this: compared to other professional sports, snooker athletes, even top snooker athletes, earn too little.
CEO Magazine and the famous betting site "Casino.com" (casino.org) have counted the total earnings of several historical snooker athletes. [2] The highest paid "gold nugget" Steve Davis and the "Billiards Emperor" Hendry in history, their total historical income (that is, decades of career including but not limited to bonuses, endorsement fees, advertising fees, and even activity fees after retirement, etc.) is about $30 million, which is not even a year's basic competition salary for first-class athletes in other professional sports - for example, Damian Lillard's salary in 2022 is $42.49 million. He's far from a historic basketball player — let alone comparable to other all-time athletes with a similar historical stature to Davis or Hendry. You know, Roger Federer basically lies for a year in 2022 due to injury and retirement, but this does not affect his income of more than $90 million a year. [3]
And like O'Sullivan or Higgins, their historical gross income is in the tens of millions of dollars. Among them, in terms of competition bonuses generated by participating in sports, "Rocket" and "Wizard" received £821,000 and £418,400 respectively in the past 2021-2022 season, ranking first and fourth in the world respectively that season, and this income is only the basic salary of Messi or LeBron James for more than a week.
The current situation of low income of snooker athletes is inseparable from the "incompetence" of the World Federation of Taiwan in the commercial development of snooker sports.
As shown in the figure below, although the World Taiwan Federation also has more than a dozen partners in name, most of them are sports organizations, sports execution companies or sports public welfare service platforms, and these partners are simply "white ground" for commercial development. As for the rest who can still pay some cash, there are only some professional equipment manufacturers for billiards, such as Aramith (a Belgian billiards manufacturer) and Xingpai (a Chinese sports equipment manufacturer that mainly produces billiard tables).
Beverages, sportswear, suits, bags, timers (watches), large broadcasters... These sponsor categories, which are commonplace in other professional sports, are "hard to find" in snooker. It is no wonder that the highest prize money for a single event that the World Taiwan Federation can offer until the 2022-2023 season is only 500,000 pounds (world championship championship), which is roughly one-fifth of the Australian Open prize money, or about a quarter of the US Open prize money, not to mention other athletes further down the ranking.
World Taiwan Federation 2022-2023 season events and bonus plan
However, even this amount of bonuses is too good to be good compared to ten years ago. You know, ten years ago, the World Federation was even engaged in "revenue-generating events" such as PTC Tour that "spent money to buy points for competitions and did not deduct points". Ding Junhui once bombarded the PTC Tour and said: "I heard that this year will increase to 20 PTC, do the brothers still have money to eat?" I can still eat two bowls of instant noodles this year, and next year it will not be so rich... Next year, everyone is ready to buy a tent, bring dry food, pants, and tighten your belt. I hope you will forward it to each other. ”[4]
In this way, it is not surprising that Higgins, who has a historical income of tens of millions of dollars, suddenly encountered a "big pie" of 300,000 euros, which may be equivalent to more than half a year's bonus income, and was "fishing and enforcing the law", right?
Fourth, how to "break the game" of the gambling game - talk about the detection of the snooker match-fixing case by the World Federation of Taiwan Games
For the "snooker gambling" incident in which many Chinese players were banned for allegedly participating in gambling, the public may be more concerned about how the World Federation will investigate the players, and if the players are finally "convicted", how will the World Federation determine that the players are "guilty" - snooker is such a delicate sport with such high technical requirements, an athlete may not be able to make a snooker in the game even if he tries his best, and what is the ability of the World Taiwan Federation. Are you sure an athlete is playing match-fixing, not pure dish?
In this regard, we may wish to discuss how the World Federation solved the "unsolved case" of snooker match-fixing based on the Stephen Lee case, which has the highest technical level, the worst attitude of the defendant to admit guilt, and the least resemblance to match-fixing at first glance.
Stephen Lee is a former famous English snooker athlete who has won five Open Championships (snooker Division 1) titles in his career, and represented England at the 2000 Snooker Nations Cup, with a world ranking of world fifth.
Stephen Lee (Infographic)
In 2012, the World Federation of Taiwan Affairs filed match-fixing charges against Stephen Lee, accusing him of match-fixing and knowingly losing to opponents in multiple matches between 2008 and 2009. In this series of cases, Stephen Lee has never pleaded guilty, and has repeatedly appealed and objected.
What's more, Stephen Lee's opponents who lost in match-fixing accusations — including but not limited to Hendry, Mark Selby and Neil Robertson — were world champions and even snooker legends far superior in strength and honor to Stephen Lee. In this case, investigators seem to have absolutely no reason to think that Stephen Lee is faking – isn't it normal to beat Hendry, Selby, and Robertson (Stephen Lee even won Hendry)? The author went to find Messi to single out football and lost, is it also the author playing match-fixing?
However, the World Federation of Taiwan Affairs detected such a case that did not look like match-fixing, and imposed a twelve-year ban and a hefty fine of £125,000 on Stephen Lee. It should be noted that the World Federation did not complete the detection of this case independently, and Scotland Yard and the Malta Gaming Authority, as long-term partners of the World Federation of Taiwan Games, have made great contributions to the case.
FOR THIS CASE, THE WORLD FEDERATION GAVE THE FOLLOWING REASONS FOR THE "CONVICTION" OF STEPHEN LEE IN THE CASE FILE (SEE WPBSA & STEPHEN LEE DECISION, SR/0000540006):
1. The core reason for the "conviction" of Stephen Lee is the special betting method of several special gambling gangs closely related to Stephen Lee.
2. The World Federation of Taiwan Affairs proves that the only connection between these gambling gangs is Stephen Lee, and they have all provided Stephen Lee with various forms of benefits, and Stephen Lee has not given the legal documents and basis for establishing a legal cooperative relationship with these gambling gangs. Not only that, these benefits basically went to the accounts of Stephen Lee's wife and nanny, but not to Stephen Lee's personal accounts - according to the Code of Conduct for World Taiwan Federation Members, the bank records, telephone records, Internet service records, social media accounts, emails and other records stored in mobile phones, tablets, electronic devices, and computers of World Taiwan Federation members have long been supervised by the World Taiwan Federation.
3. The World Federation of Taiwan has proved that gambling gangs bet much more on specific matches Stephen Lee played in and much riskier than they bet on other snooker matches - such as they invested a lot of money to bet on some special markets with high odds, such as which game or rounds of the game Stephen Lee would lose.
For example, gambling gangs put a lot of money in, betting that Stephen Lee would lose 1-5 to Robertson, would lose the first game against Hendry (this Stephen Lee won) and Mark King, would lose 0-5 or 1-5 to Selby... And so on and so forth.
A large amount of the money was wagered over the course of the game after Stephen Lee won a match.
4. These gambling gangs have taken multiple measures to disguise their bets on the above-mentioned high-risk markets, such as using fake identities, proxy accounts, etc., and if they are making random bets, then this disguised identity is obviously unnecessary.
5. To place the above bets, it is necessary to deposit a large amount of funds in the account opened by the bookmaker in advance, which proves that the corresponding bets were premeditated and not random.
6. The first time these matches were wagered and profitable, Stephen Lee's wife and nanny both received a large number of small remittances to their accounts, many of which amounted to exactly 50% of the amount made by the gambling gang on a particular bet at the time. In addition, Stephen Lee's wife received a hefty remittance of £17,000 from a gambling gang in an account opened in the Isle of Man, which is not the account used daily by the two people who settled in England.
7. Before and after these matches, Stephen Lee and the gambling gang had a large number of phone calls, as well as deleted but proven text message exchange records. Although Stephen Lee claims that the gambling gangs handled the so-called "investment business" for him, he could not provide any evidence that he had "invested" in it, including why the text messages were deleted.
8. Combined with the above analysis and a large amount of evidence provided by Scotland Yard and the Malta Gaming Authority, the World Federation finally "convicted" Stephen Lee.
By collecting account information and evidence from the police and providing gambling-related data through gaming authorities, the World Federation can easily prove whether the golfer is match-fixing or lying through a large amount of cross-evidence - this is still when the gambler refuses to admit guilt in order to protect a specific player.
And for snooker players without white skin, gamblers won't even protect them. Once caught by the police, gamblers will not hesitate to confess to match-fixers. In recent years, a number of players in Asia, including but not limited to former Chinese professional players Yu Delu and Cao Yupeng, and many players in Thailand have been punished for match-fixing, and the punishment for them is much easier than the punishment of Stephen Lee - in addition to the "confession and leniency" like Yu Delu, more often than not, as soon as the British police come to the door, gamblers will immediately sell the players, not only to explain all the explanations, but also to provide the evidence needed by the police by the way.
Fifth, what is the future of China's snooker business after the "Great Ban"?
Many years ago, Ding Junhui's friend and famous domestic billiards promoter Ren Haojiang gave a rather pessimistic assessment of the development of domestic snooker:
"There are less than 1,000 domestic professional players, most of their income is mainly part-time coaches, an hour is only 1200 yuan income, a month, better players can earn 10,000 or even 20,000 yuan." In addition, these professional players can join various clubs to play or coach others to play when they have nothing to do, and they do not have a regular income, so it is difficult to have financial security. To sum up, I think it is unlikely to enter the Olympic Games in 2020, and the career span is relatively long, at least there is a promotion period of more than ten years. ”[5]
Nearly ten years have passed, the development of domestic snooker is still difficult to call unsatisfactory, in the eyes of the vast majority of the public, China's snooker cause is equal to Ding Junhui alone, as long as Ding Junhui is still glamorous, then there is no problem with China's snooker cause.
But even Ding Junhui, when he was engaged in endorsement of a web game such a commonplace activity abroad, was also questioned by various marketing numbers with rhythm questioning "Do you have to make any money" and was made into a ghost animal video mockery - I really don't know what is unacceptable about endorsement page games, do you let Ding Junhui learn from his old rival O'Sullivan and endorse betting sites?
Ding Junhui has been questioned for endorsing page games, but his old rival O'Sullivan has already endorsed gambling sites
And the negative impact of this "ban" incident on China's snooker cause will be huge, especially if the possibility of these banned Chinese players being eventually "convicted" is much higher than that of their Western counterparts, especially - for gambling investigations, the World Taiwan Federation has only planted on white players, thanks to the careful protection of white golfers by European gambler groups. As for the survey conducted by Asian players, the World Taiwan Federation relies on the gamblers of "one dozen and one move", and has maintained a winning record so far.
There is no doubt that if the Chinese players are eventually convicted, they will undoubtedly be self-inflicted, but we cannot ignore the long-standing problems in the development of Chinese snooker. Perhaps this banning can sound the alarm for practitioners in China's snooker industry:
1. Snooker is a sport, although it is necessary to advocate the sportsmanship of hard struggle that has been adhered to for a long time, but snooker is more of a job, for practitioners, finding ways to survive by legal means is the basis of all development. Snooker practitioners should further broaden their thinking and expand their "survival circle" from multiple dimensions - online and offline combined training courses, live broadcasts, cross-border activities, legal endorsements of more product categories, etc., rather than just focusing on the table and billiards;
2. The public should have an understanding of snooker players: endorsement pool table is OK, how about endorsement page game? What about luxury endorsements? As long as it is a legitimate business, why should the players not do it?
3. The most important thing is that Chinese snooker players should uphold basic professional ethics and ethics, play and behave honestly, and must not participate in illegal activities such as gambling. In this regard, please do not take chances, you know, in the current increasingly fierce confrontation and conflict, your skin color alone will not protect you safe and sound - once the police come to the door, gamblers in order to protect themselves, the first person to sell is you!
Resources:
[1] WST. MATHS STUDY NAMES HIGGINS THE BEST,https://wst.tv/maths-study-names-higgins-the-best/.
[2] Ryan Miller. Top 10 Richest Snooker Players In The World, https://ceoworld.biz/2022/08/04/top-10-richest-snooker-players-in-the-world/.
Aaron Shields. Top 10 Richest Snooker Players Ever, https://www.casino.org/blog/richest-snooker-players/.
[3] SOPHIE HANSON. Roger Federer Is Retiring From Tennis After $1B in Endorsements—Here’s How Much He’s Worth，https://stylecaster.com/roger-federer-net-worth/.
[4] Hanwang-Wuhan Daily: "Ding Junhui Bombards: No Money to Eat Taiwan Federation Response: Players Don't Be Content", https://sports.sohu.com/20111019/n322704387.shtml.
[5] China News Network: "Experts are not optimistic about snooker's entry into the Olympics because of long time and low audience", https://www.chinanews.com.cn/ty/2014/04-09/6043390.shtml.
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