Soccer-Illegal gambling bigger threat than doping, experts warn

By Mark Ledsom

ZURICH, Nov 10 (Reuters) - Illegal gambling and match-fixing attempts pose a bigger threat to soccer than doping, FIFA betting experts told a Zurich congress on Monday.

"It is a big threat ... in the special case of football even bigger than doping because of the perception it leaves in the minds of the public," said Detlev Zenglein, analyst for the Early Warning System (EWS) set up by soccer's ruling body FIFA to monitor betting patterns.

"Every time there are rumours it sticks in people's heads and lessens their enthusiasm for sport because they think they might have been cheated."

According to EWS officials, illegal betting could account for more than 100 billion of an estimated $350 billion revenue generated by gambling worldwide.

"That's the general industry reckoning for how much revenue, meaning the total turnover minus winnings paid out, was collected in the illegal Asian betting markets this year," EWS strategy head Wolfgang Feldner told Reuters.

"Our main fight is against those markets. In Europe the industry is highly regulated, they have their rules and they are fighting with us against threats such as match-fixing.

"We have to make the public aware though that in Asia there is something going on that attacks the integrity of the sport."

According to congress speakers, the biggest difficulty lies in connecting unusual betting patterns with actual attempts to rig results.