Leading UK bookmaker, William Hill, announced that the company will be
keeping a closer eye on suspicious betting patterns over growing concerns of
match fixing in the past few months in the country.
A spokesman for William Hill, Graham Sharpe said that the company will be
particularly vigilant towards the end of the season as games are played between
teams that have no incentive to compete.
William Hill said it would be wary of large bets placed on these 'dead
rubber' games.
"When you are taking a lot of money for a game of that nature, your first
thought is 'why'?" said Sharpe.
"At the end of next season, we will be looking much more closely at games,"
he explained. "If we identify any unusual or suspicious betting patterns, we
would reserve the right to take the ultimate action. I can see us reacting much
more quickly."
Nevertheless, Sharpe said that William Hill would only suspend all bets on a
game as a last resort.
"We have no plans to implement that situation, but we couldn't rule it out,"
he said.
This comes only days after William Hill was one of a number of leading
bookmakers, including Ladbrokes and Expekt, who suspended betting and voided all
bets on a tennis match played out between Oscar Hernandez and Daniel Kollerer
during a grass court match in the Netherlands last week.
All the bookmakers picked up on suspicious betting patterns on a game that,
odds-wise, could have gone both ways but triggered huge odds on Hernandez
winning the match.
Going back to growing fears of game fixing in the soccer industry, especially
among non league games, William Hill's Graham Sharpe said: "Over the years, only
a tiny percentage of games have caused any problems. But we would decline a bet
if it was very unusual and we couldn't make a book on it."
