Betting in sports is a menace that is hard to curb. It's illegal in India, still it happens on a large scale. The latest spot-fixing scandal in IPl involving a Test cricketer, a Ranji Trophy player and a local cricketer, besides opening the can of worms, has opened up a door of opportunity to clean up the dirty corners of the game.
According to the experts, it is in the best interests of India to legalise betting in the country. They say that by legalising it, government can generate revenue as well as regulate it the way it wants.
"The way to stop it altogether, except for the odd one -- but we're getting too many at the minute -- is this business of making betting legal in India. It's illegal, so people do it," Geoffrey Boycott, former England captain, told espncricinfo.com.
Boycott's view was supported by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), an association of business organisations in India.
"Despite several attempts to ban it, betting is continuing albeit in an underground way and substantial resources have been invested into enforcing such a ban. Middle way out is it should be regulated in a way which reduces this to an acceptable level. Hence, the Government should think of legalising and regulating betting," FICCI said in a statement.
Boycott tried to explain his views with an example. "When beer was illegal in America during prohibition, you had all this illegal drinking and all these mafia-type people and so forth involved. And so you'll get the worst type of society involved in betting, from the bookies and that sort of people, when you have something that people want to do but it's illegal," he said.
Former India football captain Bhaichung Bhutia said that India needs to learn from Europe where legalising betting helped them prevent fixing scams in football
"In Europe betting is legalised and you don't come across such scams everyday in football like you get to see it in cricket. I think legalising would make it better," Bhutia told reporters on the sidelines of a Football Players Association of India event last night in Mumbai.
FICCI said India is losing billions of dollars in taxable revenue (an estimated Rs 12-20,000 crore annually) through black marketing operations in sports betting.
"According to FICCI, the greatest advantage of regulating sports betting is going to be the accountability for the large amounts of money transferred through illegal channels and reduction in cases of match fixing, money laundering and crimes," it said.
"If gaming and betting is regulated in India, it will benefit exchequer and could potentially fund sports development, social protection or welfare schemes and infrastructure development plans.
“A system which seeks simply to prohibit rather than control gambling is turning its back on the problem. Ban cannot be implemented but sports betting can be controlled with proper regulation to prevent further deterioration of conduct of sports in country.”
But Boycott feels that it will take a lot out of the Indian government to decriminalise betting given that it doesn't "like change".
"Many people have suggested to the Indian government that making betting legal at cricket, like it's legal in horse-racing and so on, would stamp most of it [corruption] out," he said.
"But you know what it's like. Trying to explain to the Indian government, they think you are telling them something, they don't like it and they don't like to change," he added.
With inputs from PTI