Hong Kong match-fixing not widespread, insist football bosses, but player says it happens ‘a lot’
- Club owner suggests corruption in game in Hong Kong is not as widespread as elsewhere
- But Premier League player who blew the whistle on match-fixing in the city more than a decade ago says it still hasn’t been stamped out
Several prominent members of the Hong Kong football community have denied the sport has a match-fixing problem, despite the city’s corruption agency arresting a dozen people connected to the game.
One club owner told the Post while they believed corruption was relatively common in football in mainland China, they did not think that was the case in Hong Kong.
But a player in the Hong Kong Premier League (HKPL), who blew the whistle on match-fixing more than a decade ago, said it was still happening “a lot”, and a former local football association CEO believed the scourge “to be endemic” locally.
On Wednesday, the Independent Commission Against Corruption [ICAC] arrested 12 players and coaches on charges of manipulating performances and results, to gain from bets placed with illegal bookmakers.
Matches in the 2023-24 Hong Kong Premier League were allegedly rigged, with three of the men arrested belonging to a team in the division, believed to be North District.
But three separate club owners have insisted the local league was clean compared to some of the issues experienced across the border, where the former Chinese Football Association president Chen Xuyuan was jailed for life in March for bribery.
