Andrew Scott-Howman: NZ Professional Footballers Association general counsel on NZ's national football league attracting offshore betting

New Zealand's national football league has attracted the attention of offshore gamblers, raising alarm among sport integrity experts.

New data shows  $212 million was wagered on the New Zealand men's domestic football league in 2024 through overseas sports betting platforms, many of which were based in Asia.

Andrew Scott-Howman, general counsel for the New Zealand Professional Footballers Association, says our timezone allows us to be a monopoly provider of live product to these markets.

"But also, the amateur nature of our competition - our players and our match officials, our referees don't get paid for playing. Therefore, they can be much easier to bribe or convince to do the wrong thing. That's also a problem."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Last year, overseas gamblers bet a whopping two hundred and
twelve million dollars on our domestic men's football league I
Know Who Knew for two hours every Saturday. New Zealand
is the only country in the world providing live sport
to the Asian gambling market. That should be on our
bumper sticker. Andrew Scott Homan is General counsel for Professional

(00:22):
Football Footballers Association with me tonight, Andrew, Good evening, pym
Aria Ran, how are you very well? Thank you? There
is some concern this might open our players up to
match fixing. If you heard anything about that.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Oh yes, this has been a concern that New Zealand
as a country has been aware of now for gosh
well over ten years, and as you say, we unfortunately
present this. Rather I suppose appealing cocktail to match fixers
from Asia in that our time zone allows us to
be the monopoly provider of live products for a couple

(00:56):
of hours every weekend. But also it's the amateur nature
of our competition. Our players and our match officials, our
referees don't get paid for playing, and therefore they can
be much easier to bribe or convince to do the
wrong thing. That's also a problem that we have as
a country.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
So it sounds like a perfect storm. Do we know
if any players are being approached to do something dodgy?

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Well, mercifully, what we do know is there have been
no reported cases of actual match manipulation, so no one's
actually done the wrong thing today. But yes, we do
have regular reports about approaches being made. Some of them
are quite kind of speculative, that might be what's at
message from someone saying, would you be interested in match fixing?

(01:44):
But others are way more sophisticated and involve people claiming
either that they are agents representing clubs in Asia or
Europe that can offer a player a trial at the
end of the season if they do a favor in return.
So there's a real mixture. We're fortunate though that generally
our players report those advances and we've got a really

(02:07):
good partnership between the sport that's New Zealand football, but
also the police. The New Zealand Police are great in
following up on those reports and trying to get to
the bottom of exactly who this might be.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Well, I suppose the ones who report to you haven't
accepted the bribes but the ones who have accepted the
bribes probably wouldn't, would they.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
That's the danger. And there's another danger as well that
the naivety of some of our players means they may
not even realize that they're being set up. They may
actually think that this person that they're dealing with is
legitimately a coach or an agent for a foreign team
that could be the greatest opportunity of their footballing career. So, yeah,

(02:45):
you're right, it's very difficult to know for certain exactly
what the kind of threat level is in the country.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Andrew, appreciate your time. Andrew Scott Holman Homan rather the
General Council Professional Footballers Association.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
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Speaker 1 (03:00):
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