FootBiz newsletter #117: Referee gambling crisis, Wednesday in administration and some sackings

Sports betting has been heading in different directions either side of the Atlantic.

In Europe, where it has long been legal, the direction of travel appears to be a clampdown on the marketing and advertising of retail gambling. For example, from next season Premier League clubs will not be allowed to advertise betting companies on the front of their shirts. This mirrors the eradication of cigarette advertising in 2006, prior to which you’d see nicotine brands all over Formula 1 cars and other sporting properties.

In the United States, where it has been legalised on a state-by-state basis over the last five years or so, the deluge of advertising for gambling has been, ahem, transformative for the sports viewing experience (and the revenues of sports teams). Every major league and team now boasts a sports betting partner, some even have sportsbooks attached to their stadiums now, like the enormous two-storey DraftKings bar at Wrigley Field, while ESPN’s new flagship app was specifically designed with betting integrations in mind to open up active revenue streams during games.

The latter has been blamed this week for a huge story that broke in the NBA. Terry Rozier, an active NBA player, has been indicted after an FBI investigation into spot-fixing. In a separate FBI investigation (with some overlapping defendants) the head coach of the Portland Trailblazers, hall-of-fame player Chauncey Billups has also been indicted — though in his case it was for allegedly running rigged poker games in cahoots with the mafia.

Billups’ case appears to be one that will spread, with organised criminals operating rigged games using technology and leaning on the reputation of Billups (and other former athletes, including the NFL’s Antonio Gates) to lure unwitting, rich participants into their games.

But I want to focus more on Rozier’s case and the reaction to it.

Firstly, I can’t even begin to imagine why or how any elite athlete would want to lower their performance when their future earnings depends on the stats they rack up on the field or court. It makes no sense. Furthermore, if you’re earning $26m a year like Rozier then how on Earth can the risk ever come close to justifying the win? Even if you were determined to try something like this, it isn’t like you can place millions on prop bets (in this case, Rozier to score under a certain amount of points, with the player leaving the game injured early on) as sportsbooks have low limits on bets like these.

Indeed, a total of just $200,000 being placed on the bet for Rozier to under-perform alerted the IC360 integrity unit employed by sportsbooks, who then flagged it to the authorities. The same predictive models have flagged suspicious patterns with specific baseball pitchers this season, who were then placed on leave by MLB.

It’s unbelievably stupid to do it, but it’s even stupider to think you’re going to get away with it.

“It’s not necessarily the sportsbook’s job to prove cheating,” Frank DiGiacomo, an attorney who practices law in gaming and sports betting told USA Today. “Their obligation is to flag a situation and report it.”

While the pearl clutchers have focused on the evils of bookmakers advertising, which is a valid complaint in other situations, that seems to me to be spectacularly missing the point. The legalisation of sports gambling in the US is a huge part of the reason Rozier was caught.

The same is true for a big story emerging from Turkey this week where the football federation announced it will take disciplinary action after finding 371 out 571 match officials had betting accounts.

Of those, 152 were actively gambling, with 42 officials wagering on over 1,000 matches and one official discovered to have placed over 18,000 bets.

"If we want to bring Turkish football to the place it deserves, we have to clean up whatever dirt there is," said federation president Ibrahim Ethem Haciosmanoglu.

And he’s correct. But if these referees were betting with the old-fashioned bookies in an alleyway then there’d be very little chance of finding out.

The tools are there to catch these people and they appear to be working. Speak to people involved in integrity solutions and they can point out the leagues where suspicious betting patterns take place most often, but the biggest accusation previously has been that leagues and governing bodies have been unwilling or unable to investigate with any real heft. Could that be shifting in a positive direction?

While cases like these may create a public perception that gambling has corrupted sports, there is probably an argument that it’s harder than ever for athletes or officials to get away with it. The next wave of AI tools will make it even harder again.

Fixing will always be a scourge on sports but perhaps these arrests should be seen as a sign of progress and active enforcement rather than a decline into all-out corruption as the nihilists would prefer.

Table of Contents

• Old Firm in crisis as Hearts pull clear

• Sheff Weds into administration, sparking… joy?

• Boehly’s eye-popping portfolio

• Textor in Wolves bid?

• Messi’s Miami future

• We don’t talk about Bruno

• More exec changes at Spurs 

• PL pare back Boxing Day schedule

• Swiss gambling authorities investigate FIFA 

• Juve sack Tudor amid reshuffle

• Bayern bin Boateng plan

• Arsenal’s scholarship deal

• Blues plan 62,000 capacity stadium

• Benitez heads to Greece 

Old Firm in crisis as Hearts pull clear

A third team in Scotland becoming vaguely competent has apparently caused the Old Firm to self-combust.

Heart of Midlothian are top by eight points and it’s only October, while Rangers’ new ownership have already fired their first managerial hire and are facing a lot of pressure over sporting director Kevin Thelwell.

But never content to be outdone by the Gers, Celtic have manufactured their own internal blow-up, with Brendan Rodgers yesterday resigning yesterday and then being publicly criticised by the club.

In a quite remarkable open letter addressed to the fanbase, the club’s biggest shareholder Dermot Desmond called Rodgers’ behaviour "divisive, misleading, and self-serving".

The blow-up goes back years, really. Rodgers walked out on Celtic for the Leicester City job in February 2019 after winning a glut of silverware on Glasgow’s east side. When he was brought back in 2023, he signed a three-year contract and committed to seeing it out given the anger that had simmered around his previous departure.

So his contract was due to expire at the end of the current season and Celtic (claim that they) sat down to discuss a new deal with Rodgers in June, expressing a desire to extend him. Rodgers “said he would need to think about it and revert” per Desmond’s statement.

“Yet in subsequent press conferences, Brendan implied that the club had made no commitment to offer him a contract. That was simply untrue.”

You can read the wild statement in its entirety on the link above but to summarise, Desmond feels they gave over every element of football control to Rodgers, including transfers, and that he then lied about in public.

This resulted in a “toxic” atmosphere around the club, again per Desmond, which is no doubt a reference to the increasing pressure on the board of a profitable business who fans feels have not invested enough to make the team competitive and are simply happy to take UEFA revenues every season.

One executive in Scottish football remarked to FootBiz that Rodgers was known to be keen on seeing out his deal to pursue a new challenge. His apparent plan to see out the contract without extending (while blaming any and all shortcomings at the club on the board) was unlikely to ever be feasible.

His immediate replacement is former manager Martin O’Neill, who managed the club some 20 years ago and will be assisted by former Celtic icon Shaun Maloney.

It is unfortunate, then, for Celtic that O’Neill — announced as the new interim Celtic boss on Monday night — was on the radio on Monday morning saying he thinks Hearts will win this season’s title in Scotland.

"With Celtic not being as strong, as physically as strong, as maybe you would want them to be. It is possible.

"Celtic can actually lose games now, whereas before, they looked invincible in matches. Rangers are no threat whatsoever. They are so far adrift it's untrue.

"But this is the moment, this is the time for Hearts.”

Sheff Weds into administration, sparking… joy?

There is light at the end of the tunnel for Sheffield Wednesday, who face an uphill battle to survive in the Championship after having 12 points deducted (leaving them on -6) but who have rid themselves of troublesome owner Dejphon Chansiri.

Wednesday were placed into administration on Friday morning, around the time that FootBiz dropped into your inbox. Usually it’s seen as a disastrous step but for Wednesday’s support it was greeted with delight.

With that news came pleas from the club, the supporters association and the new administrators for fans to reverse their boycott and buy tickets, merchandise, food and beverage or whatever it takes to fill the club’s dusty, vacant coffers.

Relieved at the end of Chansiri’s reign, they reacted as you’d expect.

The Owls still lost at home to fellow strugglers Oxford United on Saturday, deepening their footballing issues. But nearly 10,000 tickets sold in the 24 hours following the administration announcement, resulting in a crowd 20,000 greater than the previous home fixture, suggests there is a supporter base willing and able to throw themselves behind the team.

One report described Hillsborough as a “religious experience” on Saturday. The fans are back, the players and staff had been paid on time (having not been in five of the previous seven months).

“This was an assembly of people who were there simply to express their undying love for a club they will never let die.”

Wednesday’s new administrators have already had several expressions of interest and “four or five interested parties that look like the real deal” according to one of those administrators, Kris Wigfield, who also happens to be a Wednesday fan.

The club lost just shy of £10m per year in 2024, and so prospective buyers would likely need to show they have multiple years worth of losses in addition to whatever price is eventually settled on for the asset. Much of this will come down to what is agreed with creditors, though football creditors must be paid in full.

"The first thing is they need to show the administrators that they could make the football club viable. So they've got to show that they've got sufficient funds to be able to fund it for the next few years,” said Wigfield.

"And secondly, we have to be satisfied that they will pass the EFL fit and proper persons test, and if they can satisfy both of those, then we'll start talking to them seriously."

While it is possible that a new owner could be in place for the January transfer window, theoretically enabling the club to strengthen their threadbare senior squad and give survival a good go, much will still rely on the EFL and their approach to existing sanctions on the club. Should they be under Chansiri-era embargoes still — currently they’re banned from buying players until 2027 — then Wednesday are almost certainly headed for League One, but there they will have a fresh start with new owners and much, if not all, of their debt cleared.

“I’d say it’s unlikely the EFL can lift all sanctions on Wednesday just because it could leave them open to risk from other clubs claiming it’s unfair,” said an owner of an EFL club in a different division.

Even if they end up in the third tier once again, Wednesday fans feel like they have their club back. And the supporters’ trust is putting together a proposal that would make the Owls a majority fan-owned club.

Boehly’s eye-popping portfolio

Todd Boehly now owns pieces of three of the biggest sports teams on Earth, after it emerged that he was part of the Mark Walter group that will set a world record by buying the Los Angeles Lakers for $10bn next week.

Market chatter at the time the deal was first reported as being agreed suggested that Boehly could be part of the group with Walter, who is already his business partner at the LA Dodgers, the best team in baseball.

But the Chelsea co-owner’s involvement had not been formally reported until Front Office Sports did so this week.

Walter and Boehly bought into the Lakers as minority owners in 2021, acquiring 27% of the team. After closing, that stake is expected to increase to around 85% with the Buss family retaining 15% and Jeanie Buss, the team’s governor, staying in her role.

The Boehly-led group off Todd himself, Walter and Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss own 37.5% of Chelsea and refused to consider a sale even as relations soured with majority owners Clearlake Capital in late 2024.

Textor in Wolves bid?

There’s a pretty wild recap of the latest in Textorland from Matt Slater, where the most insignificant story of the lot is that he made an offer for Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Given he has no money and is fighting legal action in numerous jurisdictions, the feeling is that Textor is unlikely to end up buying Wolves from Fosun.

The only Chinese ownership group in the Premier League has been subject to some internal conflict over selling the club in the last few seasons, as covered by FootBiz last October.

Being rock-bottom of the Premier League isn’t likely to help the valuation.

Messi’s Miami future

Business in the USA is simply too good for Lionel Messi, who has signed an extension to his Inter Miami contract until 2028.

It guarantees that the Argentine, considered by anyone with eyes to be the greatest player of his generation, will play in next summer’s World Cup. Which was pretty much expected.

But carrying on for a further two years in Major League Soccer is a commitment that some had not seen coming. Messi will also have a hand in selecting his new marquee teammates in south Florida as Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba prepare to retire. Neymar, who has been appalling since returning to Brazil, has been linked with a move and so too has Robert Lewandowski.

The key thing for Inter Miami was having Messi for the opening of Miami Freedom Park, the brand new stadium near MIA Airport that I snapped the following incredibly professional picture of from a moving taxi earlier this month.

And the World Cup winner is expected to become a co-owner of the team when he does eventually retire, allowing him join David Beckham and Jorge Mas on the cap table of Major League Soccer’s most valuable franchise.

It probably well and truly ends the likelihood of Messi ever returning to Rosario to play for his boyhood club Newell’s Old Boys too, though the security issues that Messi would face returning home had already kind of rendered that impossible.

We don’t talk about Bruno

Bruno Fernandes has a release clause of £57million in his Manchester United contract that can be triggered by overseas clubs next summer, according to The Times. 

The Portuguese midfield player cannot join a Premier League club for that amount, while the clause is only active for a limited period next year.

The Times reported last weekend that Saudi Pro League club Al-Hilal triggered the release clause last summer and offered Fernandes a salary of £700,000-a-year, but he opted to stay at United. The 31-year-old's contract at Old Trafford runs until 2027, but the club have an option to extend it by a further 12 months.

More exec changes at Spurs 

Tottenham are making further significant changes at executive level, with the Daily Mail reporting that the club’s director of football administration and governance Rebecca Caplehorn is set to leave after 10 years.

Although lacking a public profile, Caplehorn has been one of the most influential figures at Tottenham over the past decade, working closely with former executive Chair Daniel Levy, who suddenly left the club after 25 years last month.

Caplehorn represented Tottenham at Premier League shareholders’ meetings and in their dealings with UEFA, and was also involved in conducting transfer and contract negotiations. Like Levy she had a reputation as a formidable negotiator.

Caplehorn’s departure will complete what has been a complete clear-out of Levy’s key aides by owners ENIC over the last few months. Executive director Donna-Marie Cullen and executive assistant Tracey Dixon, who is married to Levy, have also left the club.

PL pare back Boxing Day schedule

The Premier League will only schedule one match on Boxing Day this year in a significant change from festive tradition, as reported by The Times yesterday.

The unusual schedule is due to broadcast contracts which requires the Premier League to play on 33 weekends from this season, with just five rounds of midweek fixtures, and the fact that Boxing Day falls on a Friday this year.

As a result, the traditional Boxing Day programme is set to be abandoned by the Premier League, with nine games to take place over the following weekend. When 26 December 26 last fell on a Friday, in 2014, all ten Premier League fixtures took place on that day.

The Premier League have yet to announce the festive schedule and which teams will be playing on Boxing Day, as TV picks have only been confirmed up to 20 December. 

In 1993, Boxing Day fell on a Sunday and only three top-flight matches were held; there were two in 1981, the lowest number since the end of the war in 1945.

The EFL and the National League are staying with tradition, with all their games still scheduled for Boxing Day. There will then be a further round of EFL matches on Monday, December 29. The majority of Premier League teams will return to action for another set of fixtures from Tuesday, December 30.

Swiss gambling authorities investigate FIFA 

FIFA are being investigated by Swiss prosecutors after the country’s gambling regulator filed a criminal complaint against them over their sale of NFTs.

The Swiss Gambling Supervisory Authority (Gespa) claim that FIFA’s sale of digital tokens and collectibles, FIFA Collect, constitutes sports betting as some prizes are on offer for buyers including tickets for next year’s World Cup. 

FIFA have also partnered with crypto operator Modex to sell right-to-buy tokens for the World Cup, and have sold tens of thousands of tokens for hundreds of dollars giving buyers the ability to purchase World Cup tickets at later date.

“Gespa was made aware of the online platform collect.fifa.com at the beginning of October 2025,” the regulator said last week. “Various competitions (drops, challenges, etc.) related to so-called collectibles are offered there. These collectibles are non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

“Participation in the competitions is only possible in exchange for a monetary stake, with monetary benefits to be won. Whether participants win a prize depends on random draws or similar procedures.”

Swiss law enforcement will now examine the referral and decide whether to press charges against FIFA.

Juve sack Tudor amid reshuffle

Juventus head coach Igor Tudor has been sacked after just 24 games in charge.

The 47-year-old’s last game was a 1-0 defeat to Lazio on Sunday, which extended their winless run to eight games in all competitions and left them eighth in Serie A. 

Tudor was appointed in March in place of Thiago Motta, who only lasted nine months. The former player only lost one game and led Juve to fourth place in Serie A to earn the job on a permanent basis, but his side have struggled this season.

Juve hired Toulouse president Damian Comolli as General Manager in the summer but are already promoting him to club president, with Johannes Spors and Marco Ottolini linked with the sporting director role.

Whether Comolli waits to fill the SD spot before hiring a new head coach will tell us a lot.

Bayern bin Boateng plan

Bayern Munich have announced that former defender Jerome Boateng will not be returning to the club in a coaching role following sustained fan protests. 

The club’s supporters were unhappy at head coach Vincent Kompany offering Boateng a “coaching internship” given he was found guilty of premeditated bodily harm against his ex-girlfriend last year.

Boateng was convicted at a trial in Munich last year and given a suspended €200,000 fine over the incident which took place in 2018, but escaped a criminal record. That ruling followed Boateng’s appeal against an earlier conviction of domestic violence in 2021.

Boateng’s potential return to Bayern provoked demonstrations by supporters, most recently in the game against Borussia Dortmund last weekend, during which they displayed banners strongly opposing the decision.

The Germany World Cup winner played for Bayern for 10 years before retiring last month.

Arsenal’s scholarship deal

Arsenal’s teenage sensation Max Dowman has agreed scholarship terms with the club as a precursor to signing his first professional contract next year.

The teenager made his Premier League debut against Leeds in August at 15 years and 235 days, becoming the second youngest player in Arsenal's history after Ethan Nwaneri, who was 15 and 181 days when he made his debut for the club in September 2022.

Dowman has made two further first-team appearances for Arsenal this season, and has played regularly for the club’s under 19 and under 21 sides.

Dowman is currently on a schoolboy contract at Arsenal, but under the terms of the Premier League’s Scholarship Agreement he can sign an enhanced scholars’ deal for two years at 16, although wages remain limited to around £500-a-month.

After turning 16 Premier League scholars can agree terms on their first professional contract, although that only takes effect when they are 17. Under 18’s can only sign contracts for a maximum of three years.

Dowman has agreed to sign a two-year scholarship deal when he turns 16 on December 31, following negotiations handled by his father, insurance executive Rob, who has set up his own sports management firm to handle his son’s career.

Blues plan 62,000 capacity stadium

Birmingham City have appointed architects to build a new 62,000 stadium at the heart of a new Sports Quarter in the city. 

London-based architects Heatherwick Studio have been engaged to work in partnership with Kansas-based company Manica on the regeneration project, whose overall cost has been estimated at between £2-3bn.

Birmingham City Council sold 48 acres of land to the club last year, with owners Knighthead Capital having already invested £100m in initial infrastructure costs. Government funding will also be sought, with the club arguing that the build will be a significant driver of economic growth.

It sounds like a smaller version of Manchester United’s ‘New Trafford’ vision and a bigger version of what new owner David Gandler has planned at Leyton Orient.

What they all have in common is American ownership looking to profit from real estate deals surrounding the club.

Benitez heads to Greece 

Former Liverpool and Real Madrid manager Rafa Benitez has been appointed head coach of Greek club Panathinaikos.

The Spaniard’s last coaching job was an eight-month spell in charge of Celta Vigo, who sacked him last March after he won just five of 28 matches.

Benitez won the Champions League at Liverpool as well as coaching Newcastle, Real, Napoli, Inter Milan and Valencia. Panathinaikos are currently seventh in Super League Greece with nine points from six matches.