Welcome, everybody to Soccer one-on. My name is Taylor Rockwell, and this week we're discussing a concept that is ubiquitous in soccer and sport in general, but simultaneously seen as a problem and potential source of conflict of interest.

It's gambling.

Not at all murky or convoluted.

This should be a quick, straightforward episode, no doubt.

By best estimates, sports gambling is at least a $500 billion a year industry, and football soccer

makes up a huge percentage of that amount.

Best calculations put gambling on football between $200 and $500 billion a year, of which a

significant percentage occurs in gray or illegal markets.

I'm showing my hand here a little bit where I am on this one.

It's a feature of

football from club and league sponsored sites to shirt sponsorships to coverage itself focused on

wages and predicted finishes. And yet we see consistent reporting on match fixing, betting

scandals, addiction, and the controversy rooted, and the idea that gambling is at once a core

aspect of football and a potential

consistent threat to its well-being. So how did we get here? How long has gambling been

intertwined with soccer? How can it be a problem for players and owners and supporters alike? Or

how can it become one, rather? It's going to be a fun episode, I think. Here with me to break

it all down as Graham, Ruthven Graham, this feels like a more challenging episode than that coefficients episode from a few

weeks ago. Hello, Taylor Rockwell. Yes, that is a high bar because that co-efficient episode

was quite the breakdown, but you're right, gambling in soccer is quite the topic, particularly

at the moment, in various different ways it is becoming a bigger and bigger talking point in the sport.

We've had stories related to players recently. We obviously had the Ivan Tony situation where he was suspended from playing for placing a number of bets.

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