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After Italy and Spain, Turkey now revives the ghost of match-fixing in football: when federations arrive late (again)

Turkish football is living these days through the biggest integrity scandal of its recent history: a criminal and disciplinary investigation into illegal betting by “referees, players and executives that has ended with mass arrests, suspensions of more than a thousand footballers and the fall of top-level names. The image is devastating; if those who take part in the match bet on it, the line between competition and fraud disappears.
What is most worrying is not only what is happening in Turkey. What is most worrying is the pattern. Because this has already happened before in other major football countries. And because, once again, it seems that the federative bodies reacted late, when the damage was already done.

The Turkish scandal: betting from within and a criminal-sporting collision
The investigation exploded after an internal audit by the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) detected an almost systemic dimension of the problem: hundreds of referees with betting accounts and dozens who would have actively bet, something prohibited by FIFA/UEFA integrity codes. The TFF suspended 149 referees/assistants and sent more than 1,000 players to disciplinary proceedings.
From there, the Istanbul Prosecutor’s Office stepped in: on December 5 it ordered the arrest of 46 suspects (Super League players, club presidents, commentators and some referees). And on December 9 a judge ordered pre-trial detention for 20 of them. The case file includes accusations of betting on their own matches and suspicions of manipulation in lower-division games 2023–2024.

The case is a perfect manual of the new legal-sporting risk that has two sides the criminal route: illegal betting, fraud, manipulation of competition and the disciplinary one: long suspensions, disqualifications and possible club liability.

Italy: the European precedent that never fully closes

Turkey is not an anomaly; it is an echo. Italy knows this story too well. Italian football has suffered major cycles of corruption linked to refereeing and results, from Calciopoli in 2006 to the huge betting and match-fixing scandal of 2011–2012, which ended with relegations, sanctions and sporting convictions.
And, even after all that, Italy has again recorded in recent years massive investigations into illegal betting by players, with dozens of footballers under judicial and federative scrutiny. Even if a fixed result is not always proven, the mere fact of betting from inside corrodes the credibility of the system.
The message is clear: even after major reforms, the betting market and economic pressure generate new incentives for the problem to return.
Spain: match-fixing, European sanctions and a deeper problem
Spain has also had its own earthquakes. The Osasuna Case, with payments to influence results, led to criminal convictions of executives and sporting sanctions, and a decade later UEFA again punished the club with European exclusions for those facts. On the other hand, accusations of influencing referees are usual in Spanish football; recently Real Madrid accused Barcelona of buying referees in the period when José María Enríquez Negreira oversaw refereeing, and in turn Barcelona has always maintained that Real Madrid has always been linked to referees through different channels.

In addition, Europol and Spanish authorities have carried out recent operations against match-fixing networks connected to illegal betting, confirming that the problem is not anecdotal but recurrent.

The conclusion is uncomfortable: Spain, like Italy, has had a disciplinary system, investigations and reforms… and yet fraud reappears. But we must also consider that proportionally very few frauds are detected, and when they are detected, it is because they are already so widespread that one must ask how they had not been detected before, which suggests that there are many more frauds that are not detected.

Do federations fail? Rather, they arrive late

The inevitable question is why, if the pattern is global, we keep seeing scandals explode instead of real prevention. There are three structural reasons:
A) Reactive, not preventive control. Federations usually act when the case is already public or criminal. That is: when integrity is already damaged.
B) Dependence on internal audits without robust external intelligence. Systems to flag suspicious betting exist, but they are not always integrated into automatic, mandatory protocols to open proceedings.

C) Institutional conflict of interest. Admitting match-fixing implies acknowledging a reputational failure of the federation itself. That is why the initial reflex is to minimize until the evidence becomes impossible to deny.

Turkey is the clearest example; it illustrates the problem with cruelty: the number of people involved suggests that the fraud was not born yesterday; it grew for years without an effective filter. So harsh sanctions are coming… and a debate that cannot be postponed. The Turkish case will probably end with exemplary sanctions for players, referees and executives, and even criminal convictions. But the important lesson is not punitive, it is institutional.

If Italy and Spain two countries with bitter experience in this matter have not managed to eradicate match-fixing, and Turkey has just exploded with a massive investigation, global football must assume a reality, betting has evolved faster than the controls.

Turkey is not an isolated case. It is the most recent reminder that if federations do not control before, justice enters after. And it enters late. And as we have said federations usually act when the case is already public or criminal and admitting it implies acknowledging a reputational failure of the institution itself.